■   . 


f 


SOCIAL      WORK     SERIES 

WHAT  IS 
SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

AN  INTRODUCTORY 
DESCRIPTION 


By 


i 


MARY  E.  RICHMOND 
if 

Director.  Charity  Organization  Depart me.mt 

Russell  Sage  Foundation 

Author  of  "Social  Diagnosis,"  "The  Good  Neighsops'  iEtc. 


NEW  YORK 
RUSSELL  SAGE  FOUNDATION 

1922 


MVh 


COPYRIGHT,  1922,  BY 
THE  RUSSELL  SAGE  FOUNDATION 


WM.  F.  FELL  CO  •  PRINTERS 
PHILADELPHIA 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I.  Introduction 5 

II.  Social  Case  Work  in  Being        ...  26 

III.  Social  Case  Work  in  Being  {Continued)    .  50 

IV.  Social  Case  Work  Defined        .       .       .  87 
V.  Human  Interdependence     .       .       ,       .  1 26 

VI.  Individual  Differences       .       .       .       .144 

VII.  The  Basis  of  Purposeful  Action      .       .  159 
VIII.  The  Home         .       .       .       .       .       .       .175 

IX.  School — Workshop — Hospital — Court    .  195 
X.  The  Forms  of  Social  Work  and  their 

Interrelations 222 

XI.  Case  Work  and  Democracy        .       .       .  244 

XII.  Conclusion 255 

Index 261 


4J8S91 


\ 


WHAT  IS 
SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

I 

INTRODUCTION 

^T^HERE  was  real  teaching  in  the  world  long 
-"■  before  there  was  a  science  or  art  of  teaching ; 
there  was  social  case  work  long  before  social 
workers  began,  not  so  many  years  ago,  to  formu- 
late a  few  of  its  principles  and  methods.  Almost 
as  soon  as  human  beings  discovered  that  their 
relations  to  one  another  had  ceased  to  be  primi- 
tive and  simple,  they  must  have  found  among 
their  fellows  a  few  who  had  a  special  gift  for 
smoothing  out  the  tangles  in  such  relations; 
they  must  have  sought,  however  informally,  the 
aid  of  these  "straighteners,"  as  Samuel  Butler 
calls  them.  Some  teachers  have  had  this  skill, 
occasionally  ministers  of  religion  have  had  it, 
and  secular  judges,  and  physicians;  though  at 
5 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

no  time  has  it  been  the  exclusive  possession  of 
these  four  professions  or  of  any  one  of  them. 

A  writer  whose  stories  and  tales  are  too  little 
known  says  of  one  of  her  characters : 

For  the  Doctor,  in  that  age  of  medical  darkness,  had 
what  is  more  useful  even  to  his  profession  than  a  knowl- 
edge of  medicine — a  great  knowledge  of  character;  and 
was  famous  for  his  diagnosis  of  the  maladies  of  the  soul  as 
well  as  of  the  body .  He  not  only  perceived,  which  was  easy, 
from  the  look  of  Hodge's  face  and  the  trembling  of  his 
hands,  the  direction  of  Hodge's  wages;  but  saw,  though 
indeed  only  in  a  glass  darkly,  what  few  people  saw  at  all  in 
that  day,  the  effect  of  mind  on  body;  so  that  the  little 
dressmaker,  a  meek,  frightened  thing,  who  had  set  up  for 
herself  in  Basset  .  .  .  required,  not  physic  and  plais- 
ters,  as  she  believed,  but  a  start,  and  an  order  from  Mrs. 
Latimer  at  the  Manor.  The  very  next  afternoon,  Dr. 
Richard  wheezed  up  the  Manor  drive  to  see  Pollie;  ob- 
tained her  word,  which  was  as  good  as  a  bond,  to  assist 
Miss  Fitten;  and  cured  his  patient.* 

Even  in  our  own  day,  the  skill  of  the  social 
case  worker  who  is  able  to  effect  better  adjust- 
ments between  the  individual  and  his  environ- 
ment  seems   to  many  of  us — as   reading  and 

*Tallentyre,  S.  G.:  Basset,  A  Village  Chronicle,  p.  93. 
New  York,  Moffat,  Yard  and  Co.,  1912. 

6 


INTRODUCTION 

writing  seemed  to  Dogberry — to  come  by  nature. 
To  many,  such  case  work  is  neighborliness  and  -. 
nothing  more.  There  is  a  half  truth  in  this*-  ' 
neighborliness  theory,  for  the  good  case  worker 
must  be  both  born  and  made,  but  its  element  of 
error  is  the  failure  to  recognize  how  much  is  ^ 
being  done  in  social  work  to  develop  a  native 
gift  through  training  and  specialized  experience. 
The  difference  of  method  and  point  of  view  as 
between  neighbor  and  specialist  is  well  illustrated 
in  the  Life  of  Laura  Bridgman,*  where  Asa 
Tenney  is  the  neighbor  and  Dr.  Howe  the  teacher. 
Laura,  it  will  be  remembered,  was  the  untrained 
blind  and  deaf  child  discovered  in  1837  by 
the  Boston  philanthropist,  Dr.  Samuel  Gridley 
Howe,  who  had  founded  Perkins  Institution  for 
the  Blind.  For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
the  deaf -blind,  one  of  their  number  under  his 
guidance  was  to  learn  through  touch  alone  to 
read  and  write  and  use  her  mind  and  hands  in  a 
variety  of  occupations.    Fortunately,  Dr.  Howe 

*  Howe,  Maud,  and  Hall,  Florence  Howe:  Laura  Bridg- 
man, Dr.  Howe's  Famous  Pupil  and  What  He  Taught 
Her,  p.  34.    Boston,  Little,  Brown  and  Co.,  1903. 

7 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

had  the  scientific  habit  of  mind ;  not  only  did  he 
devise  new  ways  of  releasing  an  imprisoned  spirit, 
but  he  kept  accurate  notes,  made  at  the  time,  of 
his  methods  and  results.  Upon  this  foundation, 
as  I  shall  presently  show,  others  have  been  able 
to  build. 

I  have  said  that  the  Bridgman  family  had  a 
neighbor,  an  old  man  with  a  big,  simple  heart. 
When  Laura  was  a  little  girl  he  used  to  take  her 
for  country  walks,  and  taught  her  the  difference 
between  land  and  water  by  letting  her  feel  the 
splash  upon  her  cheek  as  she  stood  by  the  brook- 
side  and  threw  stones  into  it.  At  the  time  that 
Dr.  Howe  asked  permission  to  give  Laura  sys- 
tematic instruction,  old  Asa  Tenney  was  one  of 
those  who  "scouted  the  notion  of  anybody's 
being  able  to  teach  her  more  than  he  could. 
She  knew  him  from  anybody  else,  and  she  knew 
a  cat  from  a  dog,  an  apple  from  a  stone,  and  he 
could  teach  her  anything  in  the  same  way  by 
which  she  had  learned  these  things." 

The  world  could  ill  afford  to  spare  its  Asa 
Tenneys.  Affection  and  kindness  unlock  many 
doors,  straighten  out  many  complications.  But 
8 


INTRODUCTION 

when  to  affection  and  kindness  we  are  able  to  ♦^ 
add  that  knowledge  of  the  workings  of  the  human   ^ 
mind  and   that  knowledge  of  social  resources  * 
which  Dr.  Howe  possessed,  we  have  a  new  power 
in  the  world  added  to  the  older  power  of  just 
loving  one  another. 

In  the  year  1886  the  parents  of  a  deaf-blind 
child  living  in  Tuscumbia,  Alabama,  applied  to 
Perkins  Institution  for  the  Blind  for  a  private 
instructor.  Choice  fell  upon  a  former  pupil  of 
the  institution,  Anne  Mansfield  Sullivan,*  who 
had  been  almost  totally  blind  from  early  child- 
hood but  whose  sight  had  become  partially 
restored  before  her  graduation  from  the  institu- 
tion. In  her  student  days  Miss  Sullivan  had 
lived  in  the  same  cottage  with  blind  and  deaf 
Laura  Bridgman.  In  addition  to  her  observa- 
tions of  this  famous  pupil  and  to  her  own  studies 
at  the  school,  she  was  able  before  going  to  Tus- 
cumbia to  devote  a  good  deal  of  time,  in  prep- 
aration for  her  task,  to  the  examination  of  Dr. 
Howe's  original  records  and  diaries.    Thus  Dr. 

*  Now  Mrs.  Macy. 
9 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Howe's  stone  was  cast — not  like  Laura's  into  a 
brook,  but  into  shoreless  waters  upon  which  the 
circles  continue  to  widen  and  widen. 

The  story  of  what  followed  has  been  told  many 
times,  but  not  from  the  angle  from  which,  as  an 
introduction  to  the  subject  of  case  work,  I  now 
propose  to  view  it. 

Helen  Keller  was  six  years  and  nine  months 
old  when  Miss  Sullivan  came  to  Tuscumbia. 
Though  her  teacher  did  not  keep  a  diary  like  Dr. 
Howe's,  we  have  what  for  my  present  purpose 
serves  even  better.  At  almost  weekly  intervals 
during  that  first  year  Miss  Sullivan  wrote  to  a 
friend,  the  matron  of  Perkins  Institution,  giving 
her  not  so  much  the  educational  details  of  a  task 
with  which  her  correspondent  was  already  fa- 
miliar, but  describing  the  new  situations,  many 
of  them  social,  with  which  she  found  herself  con- 
fronted, and  adding  the  frankest  possible  report 
of  her  own  mental  processes  in  trying  to  meet 
these.  So  we  have  in  the  letters  not  only  what 
happened  but  how  it  happened,  and  the  teacher's 
own  reactions  as  well  as  the  pupil's. 

On  the  educational  side,  some  of  Miss  Sulli- 

10 


INTRODUCTION 

van's  methods  anticipate  those  of  the  most  ad- 
vanced school  of  present-day  teachers.  On  the 
.  social  side,  also,  they  represent  at  many  points 
*our  modern  social  case  work  method  of  pro- 
cedure, though  under  conditions  that  social 
work  can  seldom  command.  In  1903  Miss 
Keller,  while  a  student  at  Radcliffe  College,  pub- 
lished The  Story  of  My  Life,*  and  Miss  Sulli- 
van's letters  are  given  in  Part  III  of  that  book. 
My  readers  will  not  be  satisfied,  I  hope,  to  know 
anything  less  than  all  of  these  letters,  together 
with  the  whole  book  of  which  they  are  a  part. 
There  could  be  no  better  introduction  to  social 
case  work.  In  fact,  certain  incidents  in  the 
story  are  wonderful  illustrations  of  what  has 
been  termed  unconscious  case  work,  and  I  shall 
try  to  describe  a  few  of  these  incidents  before 
giving  examples  of  the  conscious  processes  of 
professional  case  workers. 

Helen  had  been  an  "eager,  self -asserting"  in- 
fant. At  nineteen  months  an  illness,  described 
as  "acute  congestion  of  the  stomach  and  brain," 

*  Keller,  Helen:  The  Story  of  My  Life.  New  York, 
Doubleday,  Page  and  Co. 

II 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

had  left  her  deaf  and  blind.  She  was  learning  to 
talk  before  the  attack,  but  very  shortly  "ceased 
to  speak  because  she  could  not  hear."  Soon  she  ^ 
began  to  tyrannize  over  everybody,  "her pother, 
her  father,  the  servants,  the  little  darkies  who 
play  with  her,  and  nobody,"  wrote  Miss  Sulli- 
van, "had  ever  seriously  disputed  her  will,  ex- 
cept occasionally  her  brother  James,  until  I 
came."  The  parents  gave  the  new  teacher  entire 
charge  of  the  little  girl. 

They  have  promised  to  let  me  have  a  free  hand  and 
help  me  as  much  as  possible.  .  .  Of  course,  it  is  hard 
for  them.  I  realize  that  it  hurts  to  see  their  afflicted  little 
child  punished  and  made  to  do  things  against  her  will. 
Only  a  few  hours  after  my  talk  with  Captain  and  Mrs. 
Keller  (and  they  had  agreed  to  everything)  Helen  took  a 
notion  that  she  wouldn't  use  her  napkin  at  table.  I  think 
she  wanted  to  see  what  would  happen.  I  attempted  sev- 
eral times  to  put  the  napkin  round  her  neck;  but  each  time 
she  tore  it  off  and  threw  it  on  the  floor  and  finally  began 
to  kick  the  table.  I  took  her  plate  away  and  started  to 
take  her  out  of  the  room.  Her  father  objected  and  said 
that  no  child  of  his  should  be  deprived  of  his  food  on  any 
account,     (p.  313)* 

*  Page  references  throughout  this  summary  are  to  pas- 
sages in  Miss  Keller's  The  Story  of  My  Life. 

12 


INTRODUCTION 

Thus  Miss  Sullivan  had  the  task  of  winning 
over  more  than  one  insurgent.  This  was  in 
March.  By  the  following  Christmas  she  was 
able  to  write: 

.  .  .  It  was  evident  that  every  one,  especially  Cap- 
tain and  Mrs.  Keller,  was  deeply  "moved  at  the  thought  of 
the  difference  between  this  bright  Christmas  and  the  last, 
when  their  little  girl  had  no  conscious  part  in  the  Christ- 
mas festivities.  As  we  came  downtyairs,  Mrs.  Keller  said 
to  me  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  "Miss  Annie,  I  thank  God 
every  day  of  my  life  for  sending  you  to  us;  but  I  never 
realized  until  this  morning  what  a  blessing  you  have  been 
to  us."  Captain  Keller  took  my  hand,  but  could  not 
speak.  But  his  silence  was  more  eloquent  than  words. 
My  heart,  too,  was  full  of  gratitude  and  solemn  joy. 
(PP-  343-44) 

How  was  this  transformation  effected?  Cut 
off  from  the  normal  approaches  to  a  child's 
heart,  Miss  Sullivan  had  very  early  had  a  frank 
talk  with  Mrs.  Keller  and  suggested  that  Helen 
be  separated  from  her  family  for  a  few  weeks. 
There  were  "two  essential  things  to  teach  her, 
obedience  and  love,"  and  neither  could  be  taught 
without  a  chance  to  pursue  a  consistent,  unin- 
terrupted policy.  Accordingly,  teacher  and  pupil 
were  established  in  a  little  garden  house  near 
13 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

the  former  Keller  home.  At  that  time  Helen 
"was  unresponsive  and  even  impatient  of 
caresses  from  any  one  except  her  mother."  In 
the  new  surroundings  she  "was  greatly  excited 
at  first,  and  kicked  and  screamed  herself  into  a 
sort  of  stupor.  .  .  .  When  she  felt  me  get 
into  bed  with  her,  she  jumped  out  on  the  other 
side."    (p.  310) 

Captain  Keller  came  every  day,  unknown  to 
Helen,  to  see  how  his  little  daughter  was  pro- 
gressing. He  often  found  her  crocheting  a  long 
red  chain  of  Scotch  wool  or  stringing  beads  on  a 
sewing-card,  and  he  remarked  how  quiet  and 
contented  she  seemed.  One  day,  during  the  two 
weeks  of  Helen's  separation  from  her  family,  his 
dog,  Belle,  came  too.  The  child  recognized  the 
dog's  presence  and,  sitting  down  beside  her,  be- 
gan to  manipulate  her  claws.  "We  couldn't 
think  for  a  second,"  writes  Miss  Sullivan,  "what 
she  was  doing;  but  when  we  saw  her  make  the 
letters  '  d-o-1-1 '  on  her  own  fingers,  we  knew  that 
she  was  trying  to  teach  Belle  to  spell."  (p.  313) 
Helen's  teacher  had  been  spelling  whole  words 
into  the  child's  hand  without  instructing  her 
14 


INTRODUCTION 

in  the  manual  alphabet,  and  had  associated  this 
spelling  with  the  corresponding  objects. 

Tempting  as  are  the  passages  in  Miss  Sulli- 
van's letters  which  describe  her  extensions  and 
modifications  of  Dr.  Howe's  great  educational 
discovery,  the  matter  to  which  I  must  confine 
myself  here  is  the  use  that  she  made  of  Helen's 
own  world — not  only  of  her  immediate  household 
but  of  the  social  occasions  of  the  community, 
the  animal  life  of  the  farm,  and  the  beauty  and 
variety  of  the  whole  countryside. 

Laura  Bridgman  had  not  only  been  trained  in 
an  institution  as  a  child,  but  had  found  in  it  her 
only  satisfactory  home  as  long  as  she  lived, 
dying  there  in  her  sixtieth  year.  Helen  Keller, 
on  the  contrary,  was  to  become  a  citizen  of  the 
world.  As  every  one  knows,  she  was  graduated 
from  Radcliffe  College,  has  written  several  books, 
is  interested  in  the  education  of  the  deaf-blind, 
and  has  had  the  deep  satisfaction  of  winning  for 
them  many  better  opportunities.  Her  social 
endeavors  have  not  stopped  here,  however,  but 
have  been  extended  to  the  much  larger  group  of 
all  the  blind,  and  she  has  also  been  an  active 
15 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

champion  of  woman's  suffrage  and  of  other 
social  reforms.  That  Miss  Keller  was  born  with 
great  natural  endowment  is  obvious,  but  she 
herself  has  always  been  the  first  to  proclaim  that 
Miss  Sullivan's  ability  to  make  her  education  a 
social  one,  Miss  Sullivan's  genius  for  ignoring 
routine  and  for  using  life  itself  as  her  best  in- 
terpreter has  meant  the  difference  between  a 
singularly  happy  life  and  one  of  utter  wretched- 
ness. 

It  is  from  an  embarrassing  wealth  of  material 
that  I  choose  the  brief  quotations  following,  of 
which  the  first  illustrates  Miss  Sullivan's  use  of 
the  animals  on  the  Keller  plantation  in  develop- 
ing the  mind  of  her  charge;  the  second  illustrates 
her  way  of  making  the  whole  household  parti- 
cipants in  the  process;  the  third,  her  skill  in 
♦  turning  a  community  occasion  to  account;  and 
tfre  fourth,  her  recognition  of  the  part  that  nature 
could  play.  The  animals  were  early  pressed  into 
service. 

She  is  much  interested  in  some  little  chickens  that 
are  pecking  their  way  into  the  world  this  morning.  I 
let  her  hold  a  shell  in  her  hand,  and  feel  the  chicken 

16 


INTRODUCTION 

"chip,  chip."  Her  astonishment,  when  she  felt  the  tiny 
creature  inside,  cannot  be  put  in  a  letter.  The  hen  was 
very  gentle,  and  made  no  objection  to  our  investigations. 
Besides  the  chickens,  we  have  several  other  additions  to 
the  family — two  calves,  a  colt,  and  a  penful  of  funny  little 
pigs.  You  would  be  amused  to  see  me  hold  a  squealing 
pig  in  my  arms,  while  Helen  feels  it  all  over,  and  asks 
countless  questions — questions  not  easy  to  answer  either, 
(p-  325) 

We  go  home  about  dinner-time  usually,  and  Helen  is 
eager  to  tell  her  mother  everything  she  has  seen.  This  de- 
sire to  repeat  what  has  been  told  her  shows  a  marked  advance 
in  the  development  of  her  intellect,  and  is  an  invaluable 
stimulus  to  the  acquisition  of  language.  I  ask  all  her  friends 
to  encourage  her  to  tell  them  of  her  doings,  and  to  manifest 
as  much  curiosity  and  pleasure  in  her  little  adventures  as 
they  possibly  can.  This  gratifies  the  child's  love  of  appro- 
bation and  keeps  up  her  interest  in  things.  This  is  the 
basis  of  real  intercourse.  She  makes  many  mistakes,  of 
course,  twists  words  and  phrases,  puts  the  cart  before 
the  horse,  and  gets  herself  into  hopeless  tangles  of  nouns 
and  verbs;  but  so  does  the  hearing  child.  I  am  sure 
these  difficulties  will  take  care  of  themselves.  The  im- 
pulse to  tell  is  the  important  thing,    (pp.  321-22) 


It  is  interesting  to  get  Miss  Keller's  impres- 
sions as  well  as  her  teacher's  of  that  memorable 
year.     She  writes: 

The  first  Christmas  after  Miss  Sullivan  came  to  Tus- 


ble      J* 

^.ivan  came  to  1 

7  4& 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

cumbia  was  a  great  event.  Every  one  in  the  family  pre- 
pared surprises  for  me;  but  what  pleased  me  most,  Miss 
Sullivan  and  I  prepared  surprises  for  everybody  else.  The 
mystery  that  surrounded  the  gifts  was  my  greatest  de- 
light and  amusement.  My  friends  did  all  they  could  to 
excite  my  curiosity  by  hints  and  half-spelled  sentences 
which  they  pretended  to  break  off  in  the  nick  of 
time.     .     . 

On  Christmas  Eve  the  Tuscumbia  school  children  had 
their  tree,  to  which  they  invited  me.  In  the  centre  of  the 
schoolroom  stood  a  beautiful  tree  ablaze  and  shimmering 
in  the  soft  light,  its  branches  loaded  with  strange,  won- 
derful fruit.  It  was  a  moment  of  supreme  happiness.  I 
danced  and  capered  round  the  tree  in  an  ecstasy.  When 
I  learned  that  there  was  a  gift  for  each  child,  I  was  de- 
lighted, and  the  kind  people  who  had  prepared  the  tree 
permitted  me  to  hand  the  presents  to  the  children.  In  the 
pleasure  of  doing  this,  I  did  not  stop  to  look  at  my  own 
gifts;  but  when  I  was  ready  for  them,  my  impatience  for 
the  real  Christmas  to  begin  almost  got  beyond  control. 
(P-  4i) 

All  my  early  lessons  have  in  them  the  breath  of  the 
woods — the  fine,  resinous  odour  of  pine  needles,  blended 
with  the  perfume  of  wild  grapes  .  .  .  Indeed,  every- 
thing that  could  hum,  or  buzz,  or  sing,  or  bloom,  had  a  part 
in  my  education — noisy- throated  frogs,  katydids  and  crick- 
ets held  in  my  hand  until,  forgetting  their  embarrassment, 
they  trilled  their  reedy  note,  little  downy  chickens  and 
wildflowers,  the  dogwood  blossoms,  meadow-violets  and 
budding  fruit  trees.    I  felt  the  bursting  cotton-bolls  and 

18 


INTRODUCTION 

fingered  their  soft  fiber  and  fuzzy  seeds;  I  felt  the  low 
soughing  of  the  wind  through  the  cornstalks,  the  silky 
rustling  of  the  long  leaves,  and  the  indignant  snort  of  my 
pony,  as  we  caught  him  in  the  pasture  and  put  the  bit  in 
his  mouth    .    .    .     (pp.  34-35) 

Then  came  Helen's  introduction  to  a  larger 
range  of  social  contacts,  first  through  her  visit 
to  Perkins  Institution,  and  later  through  in- 
struction in  New  York  and  Cambridge. 

[First  visit  to  Boston.]  I  was  never  still  a  moment; 
my  life  was  as  full  of  motion  as  those  little  insects  that 
crowd  a  whole  existence  into  one  brief  day.  I  met  many 
people  who  talked  with  me  by  spelling  into  my  hand,  and 
thought  in  joyous  sympathy  leaped  up  to  meet  thought, 
and  behold,  a  miracle  had  been  wrought!  The  barren 
places  between  my  mind  and  the  minds  of  others  blossomed 
like  the  rose.    (p.  50) 

At  the  Cambridge  school,  for  the  first  time  in  my  life,  I 
enjoyed  the  companionship  of  seeing  and  hearing  girls  of 
my  own  age.  I  lived  with  several  others  in  one  of  the 
pleasant  houses  connected  with  the  school,  the  house 
where  Mr.  Howells  used  to  five,  and  we  all  had  the  advan- 
tage of  home  life.  I  joined  them  in  many  of  their  games, 
even  blind  man's  buff  and  frolics  in  the  snow;  I  took  long 
walks  with  them;  we  discussed  our  studies  and  read  aloud 
the  things  that  interested  us.  Some  of  the  girls  learned  to 
speak  to  me,  so  that  Miss  Sullivan  did  not  have  to  repeat 
their  conversation,     (pp.  86-87) 

19 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

At  Tuscumbia  there  had  been  no  one  to  whom 
Miss  Sullivan  could  turn  in  perplexity;  she  had 
been  thrown  upon  her  own  resources  and  had 
been  forced  to  work  out  her  own  solution  of  each 
difficulty  as  best  she  could.  But  when  her  pupil 
was  able  to  travel,  no  teacher  could  have  been 
more  eager  to  use  expert  advice  and  assistance 
wherever  these  could  be  found.  Helen  heard, 
for  instance,  in  1890  of  a  Norwegian  deaf  and 
blind  girl  who  had  been  taught  to  speak,  and  she 
entreated  her  teacher  to  find  such  instruction 
for  her.  Although  Miss  Sullivan  dreaded  for 
her  charge  the  disappointment  of  a  possible 
failure,  she  did  not  hesitate  long,  but  took  Helen 
to  a  specialist  in  New  York  from  whom  she 
could  gain  the  rudiments  of  articulation.  Care- 
fully heeding  the  methods  used  by  this  expert, 
Miss  Sullivan  was  able  to  supplement  the  special 
training.  But  for  her  genius,  untiring  perse- 
verance and  devotion,  as  Miss  Keller  testifies, 
"I  could  never  have  progressed  as  far  as  I  have 
toward  natural  speech." 

Again,  in  the  matter  of  religious  instruction, 
Helen's  teacher  sought  the  aid  of  Bishop  Brooks. 
20 


INTRODUCTION 

As  a  child  [Miss  Keller  says]  I  loved  to  sit  on  his  knee 
and  clasp  his  great  hand  with  one  of  mine,  while  Miss 
Sullivan  spelled  into  the  other  his  beautiful  words  about 
God  and  the  spiritual  world.  I  heard  him  with  a  child's 
wonder  and  delight.  My  spirit  could  not  reach  up  to  his, 
but  he  gave  me  a  real  sense  of  joy  in  life,  and  I  never  left 
him  without  carrying  away  a  fine  thought  that  grew  in 
beauty  and  depth  of  meaning  as  I  grew.  Once,  when  I 
was  puzzled  to  know  why  there  were  so  many  religions, 
he  said:  "There  is  one  universal  religion,  Helen — the  re- 
ligion of  love.  Love  your  Heavenly  Father  with  your 
whole  heart  and  soul,  love  every  child  of  God  as  much  as 
ever  you  can,  and  remember  that  the  possibilities  of  good 
are  greater  than  the  possibilities  of  evil;  and  you  have  the 
key  to  Heaven."   (pp.  133-34) 

Finally,  to  bring  these  extracts  to  an  end,  there 
is  abundant  evidence  that  one  of  the  elements  in 
Miss  Sullivan's  success  was  the  gr^aJM^anknfiss. 
with  which  she  habitually  treated  Helen  after  her 
confidence  had  been  won.  Her  resemblances  to 
normal  folk  were  always  emphasized;  the  dif- 
ferences which  might  so  easily  have  set  her  apart 
were  minimized.  This  policy  the  teacher  im- 
pressed upon  others  who  came  in  contact  with 
her  pupil. 

No  attempt  [says  the  editor  of  Miss  Keller's  Life]  is 
21 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

made  by  those  around  her  either  to  preserve  or  to  break 
her  illusions.  When  she  was  a  little  girl,  a  good  many- 
unwise  and  tactless  things  that  were  said  for  her  benefit 
were  not  repeated  to  her,  thanks  to  the  wise  watchfulness 
of  Miss  Sullivan.  Now  that  she  has  grown  up,  nobody 
thinks  of  being  less  frank  with  her  than  with  any  other  in- 
telligent young  woman,     (p.  294) 

Let  me  summarize  this  illustration  of  uncon- 
scious case  work  in  a  few  words  and  try  at  the 
same  time  to  suggest  some  of  its  resemblances 
to  the  conscious  case  work  which  is  to  be  des- 
cribed later.  This  remarkable  teacher  had  a 
true  instinct  for  that  greatest  of  all  realities — 
the  reality  of  personality.  Beneath  all  the 
handicaps  of  her  charge  and  the  unfortunate 
effects  of  those  handicaps  she  was  able  to  divine 
the  unusual  character  of  the  child.  Building 
upon  this  discovery,  she  summoned  one  en- 
vironmental resource  after  another,  first  to  re- 
lease, then  to  develop,  that  highly  socialized 
personality  of  whom  we  speak  today  when  we 
name  Helen  Keller. 

Almost  from  the  beginning  it  was  possible  to 
push  beyond  the  negative  side  of  the  task.  The 
preliminary  lesson  in  childish  obedience  was 
22 


INTRODUCTION 

necessary  to  orderly  progress,  and  once  learned, 
Helen's  affection  was  soon  won.  To  accomplish 
this,  however,  Miss  Sullivan  took  upon  herself 
the  humblest  duties,  such  as  dispensing  with  a 
nurse  for  Helen  and  caring  for  her  personally 
until  she  was  able  to  care  for  herself.  Here 
again  the  instructor  was  too  wise  to  build  upon 
influence  gained  through  one  channel,  whether 
obedience  or  affection.  Soon  she  was  able  to 
appeal  to  the  mind  of  her  pupil — doing  this 
through  everything  in  the  child's  world,  even 
through  the  very  persons  and  things  that  seemed 
at  first  to  be  obstacles  in  her  path. 

There  is  a  sympathy,  an  affection,  which  makes 
us  feel  strong;  there  is  another  which  makes  us 
dependent  and  weak.  Miss  Sullivan's  sympathy 
released  her  pupil  from  that  dependence,  and  it 
did  this  by  establishing  her  relation  to  a  multi- 
tude of  vital,  growing  things  and  ideas,  first  in 
space,  later  in  time.  One  of  the  most  pitifully 
isolated  of  human  beings  thus  became  one  of  the 
most  completely  identified  with  whatever  is 
best  in  the  world. 

I  shall  have  occasion  to  refer  repeatedly  in 
23 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

these  pages  to  change  of  environment  as  a  means 
^  of  social  treatment  in  difficult  cases.  In  the  first 
month  of  her  teaching,  Miss  Sullivan  used  this 
particular  means  so  skilfully  that  it  was  possible 
to  return  Helen  to  her  own  natural  world  at  the 
end  of  only  two  weeks. 

Another  mark  of  Miss  Sullivan's  intuitive 
social  work  sense  was  her  willingness  to  turn  to 
any  one  whose  expert  knowledge  of  whatever 
kind  could  supplement  her  own.  She  was  wisely 
humble,  for  example,  about  Helen's  ambition 
to  learn  to  speak,  and  about  the  child's  spiritual 
needs.  Trained  herself  in  a  school  which  did 
not  attempt  to  teach  articulation  to  the  deaf- 
blind,  she  felt  a  certain  skepticism  and  she  over- 
came it.  In  the  matter  of  Helen's  religious  train- 
ing she  recognized  both  the  urgency  and  the 
extreme  delicacy  of  the  task,  and  turned  for  aid 
to  one  of  the  greatest  religious  teachers  of  that 
time. 

Finally,  she  taught  her  charge  to  trust  her 

absolutely  by  being  worthy  of  that  trust.     In 

the  service  of  personality — of  a  personality  other 

than   our  own — there   is   a   field   of   endeavor, 

24 


INTRODUCTION 

whether  we  call  it  teaching  or  social  case  work 
or  by  some  other  title,  that  is  of  all  fields  the 
most  exacting.  We  are  "named  and  known" 
by  such  service;  by  and  through  it  we  take  our 
"station  and  degree." 


25 


II 
SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

TT  MAY  be  well,  before  attempting  any  de- 
•*-  scription  of  social  case  work  as  practised  in  a 
genuinely  professional  spirit,  to  present  some 
illustrations  of  such  work  and  later  compare 
illustrations  with  description.  The  purpose  of 
this  small  book  is  not,  however,  to  discuss 
method,  but  to  inquire  into  what  social  case  work 
is  and  why  it  is. 

The  typical  character  of  any  group  of  examples 
can  be  challenged,  of  course,  especially  when  the 
group  is  perforce  so  small  as  is  the  one  here 
selected,  but  the  process  by  which  I  arrived  at  a 
choice  is  as  follows:  After  discarding,  in  my 
search,  all  work  not  recorded  with  a  fair  degree 
of  fulness  at  the  time  that  it  was  done,  I  have 
given  preference  to  those  social  case  records 
which  covered  a  period  of  active  treatment 
varying  from  two  to  six  years,  and  preference 
26 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

to  work  with  clients*  of  different  nationalities. 
The  search  was  made  in  cities  widely  separated 
and  in  social  agencies  of  more  than  one  type, 
though  I  have  had  to  exclude  agencies  in  which 
the  social  treatment  was  subsidiary  to  some 
other  form  of  professional  service.  To  these  limita- 
tions I  have  added  the  further  one  of  an  arbitrary 
choice  of  the  following  general  types  of  problem : 
A  difficult,  maladjusted  girl  who  is  not  a  de- 
fective 

A  small  boy  in  need  of  a  home 
A  husband  and  wife  who  cannot  agree 
A  fatherless  family  with  children  who  are  not 
receiving  proper  care 

A  widow  with  children  who  is  not  an  efficient 
home  maker 

An  older  woman  with  difficulties  which  her 
relatives  fail  to  understand 

*  Few  social  case  workers  adopt  the  practice,  permitted 
to  the  physician,  of  referring  to  those  with  whom  they 
have  professional  dealings  as  "cases."  The  social  worker's 
"case"  is  the  particular  social  situation  or  problem — not 
the  person  or  persons  concerned.  For  the  person,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  his  problem,  the  term  now  in  general  use  is 
"client."  As  the  nature  of  the  relation  between  the  social 
practitioner  and  the  one  receiving  social  treatment  changed^ 

27 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

I  have  mentioned  Dr.  Howe's  diary  records 
of  his  treatment  of  Laura  Bridgman.  As  social 
workers  have  gradually  learned  how  to  render 
more  intelligent  and  effective  service  to  indi- 
viduals and  families,  Dr.  Howe's  practice  of 
keeping  a  record  of  developments  in  treatment 
has  become  their  practice  also.  At  first  their 
attempts  were  little  more  than  a  rambling 
chronicle  of  motions  made  in  the  course  of  their 
work,  but  gradually  they  have  learned  how  to 
construct  good,  chronological  accounts  both  of 
the  essential  processes  used  and  of  the  observa- 
tions upon  which  these  processes  were  based. 
A  record  so  made  becomes  not  only  an  indis- 
pensablgj^uide  to_future  action  in  behalf  of  the 
person  recorded;  it  can  be  unexcelled  material 
for  trainingjother  case  workers,  and  for  training 
those  who,  in  preparation  for  other  _types  of 
sociaLwork — such  as  work  with  neighborhood 
groups  or  social  research  or  the  conducting  of 
social  reform  campaigns — seek  a  clearer  under- 
standing of  the  numberless  ways  in  which  bad 

"client"  replaced  to  a  large  extent  the  earlier  term  of 
"applicant." 

28 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

social  conditions  affect  the  lives  of  individuals. 
The  value  of  social  case  records  extends  farther. 
Under  analysis  which  is  thoroughly  competent 
and  careful  they  may  become  the  basis  of  sta- 
tistical studies  or,  more  often,  of  social  discovery 
arrived  at  by  non-statistical  methods. 

There  is  one  drawback  to  all  these  uses  of  the 
social  case  history.  In  the  whole  range  of  pro- 
fessional contacts  there  is  no  more  confidential 
relation  than  that  which  exists  between  the 
social  worker  and  the  person  or  family  receiving 
treatment.  But  unfortunately  a  social  history 
is  far  more  easily  identified  with  the  person  or 
persons  whose  private  affairs  it  records  than  is 
any  other  form  of  record — than  the  medical  case 
history,  for  example.  It  will  not  be  necessary, 
however,  to  report  the  problems  here  presented 
with  anything  like  the  fulness  required  for  pur- 
poses of  training  or  of  research.  My  own  quest 
is  confined  to  narrow  limits,  the  one  aim  being 
to  reveal  what  social  case  work  in  its  essentials 
is.  It  has  been  possible,  therefore,  not  only 
greatly  to  foreshorten  the  narratives  of  these 
few  selected  records,  but,  by  deliberately  chang- 
29 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

ing  a  number  of  their  details  when  these  had  no 
relation  to  the  problems  and  services  described, 
to  conceal  still  further  the  identity  of  the 
originals. 

During  the  last  decade  social  case  work  has 
^  had  a  rapid  extension  of  its  field  of  activity. 
At  one  time,  as  a  vocation,  its  field  was_confined 
almost  exclusively  to  th£jcare.of  dependents  and 
delinquents,  just  as  the  first  savings  banks  were 
for  dependents  only  and  the  first  hospitals  for 
the  destitute  sick.  But  today  social  case  work 
in  some  form  or  other  has  become  a  necessary 
part  of  many  of  our  courts,  schools,  hospitals, 
factories,,  workshops,  compensation  commis- 
sions, and  of  the  hundred  other  places  in  which 
decisions  affecting  the  welfare  of  individuals 
must  be  made.  In  many  of  these  places,  how- 
ever, the  habit  of  full  recording  is  not  yet  well 
established,  and  the  work  has  been  organized 
so  recently  that  long-continued  service  to  the 
same  individuals  or  families,  with  its  surer 
measure  of  successes  and  failures,  is  still  the 
exception.  It  is  for  these  reasons  that  I  have 
confined  my  choice  of  illustrations  to  the  longer 
30 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

established  children's  societies  and  family  wel- 
fare societies. 

So  much  by  way  of  explanation.  Having 
selected  a  record,  my  first  care  has  been  to  study 
it  in  detail  before  conferring  with  the  case  worker 
who  made  it.  After  full  conference  I  have  pre- 
pared my  own  account,  with  many  details  of  the 
history  omitted  and  the  case  worker's  plans  and 
policies  emphasized.  Finally,  I  have  submitted 
my  account  to  the  case  worker  for  revision  and 
correction.  Some  of  these  precautions  may  have 
been  unnecessary,  but  at  least  they  will  have 
saved  me  from  becoming  just  one  more  narrator 
of  moving  little  stories.  The  six  narrative 
accounts  that  immediately  follow,  unpicturesque 
though  they  are,  deserve  a  more  careful  reading 
than  the  discussion  which  later  grows  out  of 
them. 

MARIA  BIELOWSKI* 

My  first  illustration  of  "case  work  in  being" 
describes  the  social   treatment  given  for  four 

*  All  names  of  real  people  have  been  changed  throughout 
these  narratives,  as  well  as  some  other  identifying  but  non- 
essential details. 

31 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

years  to  a  Polish  girl,  who  was  under  the  care  of 
a  small  private  society  having  a  staff  of  case 
workers  and  a  school  for  difficult  but  not  de- 
fective young  girls.  From  this  school  its  pupils 
are  usually  placed  out  in  private  families,  where 
they  continue  to  be  under  the  careful  supervision 
of  the  society's  staff.  Before  the  girl  whose 
story  I  shall  tell  entered  the  school,  she  had 
been  the  charge  for  a  short  while  of  a  probation 
officer  of  the  court. 

Maria  Bielowski  went  to  work  in  a  factory 
when  she  was  only  fifteen.  After  many  dis- 
agreements with  her  stepmother  about  the  share 
of  her  wages  to  be  turned  over  to  the  family  and 
also  about  her  habit  of  staying  out  late  at  night, 
she  left  home  and  began  to  live  in  lodging  houses 
and  cheap  hotels.  From  one  of  these  the  girl 
was  brought  into  court  for  stealing  a  few  dollars 
from  a  fellow-boarder.  To  those  who  saw  her 
just  after  her  arrest  she  was  a  very  unprepossess- 
ing sight.  Her  features  were  dark  and  heavy, 
her  clothing  ragged,  dirty,  and  badly  stained; 
her  head  was  crowned  with  three  strands  of  false 
hair,  later  found  to  be  infested  with  vermin. 
32 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

What  did  the  probation  officer  discover  as 
to  her  background?  From  two  places  of  em- 
ployment her  record  was  that  of  an  irregular 
worker.  One  hospital  asked  to  examine  her  re- 
ported that  she  had  good  intellectual  capacity 
but  a  psychopathic  personality.  As  regards  her 
family,  the  Bielowskis  had  come  from  Poland 
five  years  earlier — the  father,  his  second  wife, 
and  four  children.  But  the  father  had  died  three 
years  after  his  arrival,  and  the  stepmother,  who 
could  speak  not  a  dozen  English  words,  ap- 
peared, although  a  good  woman,  to  have  lost 
all  control  over  the  children.  The  two  grown 
sons  were  away  from  home;  the  younger  boy 
was  in  a  reformatory.  Should  Maria,  who  had 
been  found  guilty  by  the  court,  be  committed 
to  a  similar  institution? 

The  social  data  obtained  by  the  probation 
officer  made  it  appear  unwise  to  place  the  girl 
on  probation  in  her  own  home.  On  the  other 
hand,  her  record  before  she  had  gone  to  work 
did  not  seem  to  justify  commitment  to  a  re- 
formatory. At  school  she  had  been  a  fair 
scholar ;  beginning  with  no  knowledge  of  English 
3  33 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

whatever,  she  had  completed  the  seventh  grade 
in  four  years.  Moreover,  it  was  learned  that 
she  had  been  a  popular  member  of  a  Girl  Scout 
troop  and  of  her  Sunday  school  class,  'these 
facts  suggested  that  probation  under  conditions 
which  would  assure  a  maximum  of  individualized 
care  might  bring  good  results.  Accordingly, 
the  officer  sought  the  aid  of  the  small  private 
society  already  mentioned,  and  somewhat  later, 
after  Maria  had  been  in  its  school  a  few  months, 
one  of  their  case  workers  became,  with  the 
sanction  of  the  girl,  the  girl's  family,  and  the 
court,  her  legal  guardian.  Under  this  guardian- 
ship her  behavior  and  character  have  improved 
steadily. 

From  a  careful  reading  in  the  original  record 
of  the  treatment  which  followed  and  from  con- 
ference with  this  guardian,  I  have  been  able  to 
trace  some  of  the  steps  by  which  the  marked 
change  in  the  girl's  habits  and  in  her  relations 
to  the  world  she  lives  in  has  been  effected.  There 
has  been  no  element  of  the  magical  or  the  spec- 
tacular in  her  gradual  development. 

During  the  earlier  stages  of  treatment  careful 
34 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

attention  had  to  be  given  to  Maria's  phyjsical 
condition.  Her  scalp  was  cleansed  and  her 
teeth  cared  for.  There  was  no  evidence  of 
irregular  sex  conduct,  but  she  was  found  to  have 
some  symptoms  of  syphilis  of  origin  unknown, 
and  was  taken  regularly  into  the  city  for  hos- 
pital treatments.  A  bad  nose  and  throat  con- 
dition was  treated  at  the  same  hospital.  Enuresis 
was  controlled  at  the  school  by  suggestion. 
Twice  during  the  following  year,  at  times  of 
special  discouragement,  this  symptom  recurred, 
but  it  responded  at  once  to  any  change  of  pro- 
gram which  improved  her  mental  attitude.  Her 
other  physical  difficulties  were  soon  remedied. 

It  was  at  the  society's  little  school,  with  its 
less  than  twenty  pupils,  that  Maria  had  her  first 
contact  with  American  standards  of  home  life. 
Here  she  was  given  careful  training  in  habits  of 
personal  cleanliness,  in  the  care  of  her  room,  in 
mending  and  washing  her  clothing,  in  cooking, 
and  in  respect  for  the  personal  belongings  of 
others.  No  borrowing  was  allowed;  each  girl 
had  her  own  bureau  and  closet  and  her  own 
small  treasures.  One  day  early  in  her  stay,  two 
35 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

little  cakes  from  a  new  baking  were  missing  from 
the  kitchen  pantry.  Every  girl  denied  taking 
them,  so  the  whole  group  were  deprived  of  their 
Christmas  trip  to  town.  Three  days  later  Maria 
confessed  to  the  head  teacher,  for  whom  she  had 
learned  to  have  a  real  affection,  that  she  was  the 
one  at  fault,  and  this  was  her  last  dishonest  act. 
In  one  of  the  private  homes  in  which  she  worked 
a  year  or  two  later,  her  employer  reported  her 
to  be  so  honest  that  "she  would  not  even  borrow 
an  ink  bottle." 

After  eight  months  in  the  school  and  her  com- 
pletion of  the  eighth  grade,  Maria  was  sent  as  a 
mother's  helper  to  a  family  at  a  summer  resort. 
In  the  autumn  of  that  year  a  position  was  found 
for  her  in  another  family,  to  help  with  the  house- 
work in  exchange  for  her  board  and  with  the 
opportunity  to  enter  the  first-year  class  at  the 
high  school.  She  has  continued  her  high  school 
course  with  credit  ever  since,  making  one  change 
of  school,  however,  when  transferred  to  another 
city.  Here  there  was  a  chance  to  place  her  with 
a  Polish  professor  and  his  wife,  in  whose  family 
she  has  had  many  advantages  in  addition  to  her 

36 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

pleasure  at  being  once  more  with  compatriots. 
Each  summer  the  society  finds  a  place  for  her 
amid  country  surroundings,  and  each  year  it  has 
arranged  a  vacation,  once  at  a  girls'  camp. 
During  the  four  years  under  guardianship  she 
has  worked  in  five  different  families.  Though 
only  two  of  the  frequent  changes  were  due  to 
her  own  restlessness,  Maria  has  at  times  been  a 
troublesome  charge,  eager  and  demanding  and 
inordinately  fond  of  personal  adornment. 

These  family  placements,  which  were  all  made 
with  the  greatest  care,  have  been  valuable  in 
giving  the  girl  a  chance  to  participate  in  Amer- 
ican life  and  ways,  but  the  most  important 
influence  in  her  improvement  has  continued  to 
be  that  of  the  caseworker  appointed  as  her  guar- 
dian. Without  dwelling  upon  details,  let  me  try 
to  name  some  of  the  principles  and  processes  of 
case  work  that  Maria's  history  reveals. 

Probably  the  case  worker's  ability  to  win  her 
way  with  a  difficult  girl  was  due  more  to  her 
imaginative  sympathy  than  to  any  other  one 
thing.  But  whether  this  quality  was  a  native 
endowment  or  partly  a  result  of  experience  with 
37 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

other  girls,  the  outstanding  fact  of  the  record  is 
that  the  guardian  did  contrive  to  see  the  world 
in  somewhat  the  fashion  that  it  appeared  to  her 
ward.  Having  some  of  the  dangers  of  her  own 
professional  world  in  mind,  perhaps,  she  was  also 
careful  to  avoid  that  rigidity  of  mind,  that 
\/  tendency  to  inhibit  the  client's  initiative,  which 
is  the  too  common  reaction  to  irritating  be- 
havior. Thus  she  writes  in  a  letter  of  explana- 
tion : 

Whenever  I  can  possibly  let  a  girl  do  what  she  wants  to, 
I  agree  to  her  doing  it.  The  instances  are  so  innumerable 
where  we  have  to  say  "no' '  that  I  feel  we  must  be  on  our 
guard  against  increasing  them  unnecessarily.  This  is  not 
the  same  thing  as  giving  in  to  a  girl  because  she  teases  or 
insists  on  having  her  own  way. 

When  Maria  was  troublesome,  her  guardian 
discriminated  between  the  trouble  that  she 
caused  and  the  real  delinquency  of  which  she 
had  been,  but  was  no  longer,  guilty.  Her  appeal 
was  constantly  to  the  girl's  self-respect  and  am- 
bition, though  not  so  much  in  set  terms  as  in 
acts  which  would  stimulate  these  qualities.  The 
society  had  Maria's  earlier  trials,  in  nyndNvhen 
38 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

it  allowed  her  a  little  more  pocket-money  than 
was  granted  to  some  of  its  other  charges.  Her 
clothes  were  never  satisjactory  to  her;  after  a 
few  months  she  tired  of  every  purchase,  no 
matter  how  much  it  pleased  her  at  first.  At  one 
time  the  question  of  clothing  versus  schooling 
became  so  acute  that  she  was  given  permission 
to  leave  school  and  take  a  short  course  which 
would  fit  her  for  office  work.  But  when  the  girl 
actually  realized  that  the  break  with  school 
would  be  permanent,  she  changed  her  mind  and 
asked  permission  to  remain. 

One  day  Maria  received  a  circular  from  a 
distant  city  offering,  through  a  course  of  lessons 
by  mail,  to  give  her  a  perfect  speaking  and  sing- 
ing voice.  The  fee  was  #50.  She  applied  at  once 
to  her  guardian  for  the  loan  of  the  money,  and 
was  told  that  the  next  time  they  were  both  in 
the  city  they  could  consult  some  one  whose 
knowledge  of  music  would  make  him  a  good 
judge  of  the  value  of  the  offer.  A  teacher  at  a 
good  music  school  was  asked  to  test  her  voice 
and  give  an  opinion  of  the  plan.  When  Maria 
heard  the  small,  wavering  sounds  that  she  made 
39 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

in  trying  to  sing  to  the  master,  even  she  was 
convinced  that  the  correspondence  course  was 
not  worth  considering. 

Another  way  in  which  arbitrariness  was 
avoided  by  this  case  worker  was  to  assume  no 
superhuman  perfection  in  herself.  She  did  not 
insist  upon  her  own  infallibility  in  homely  mat- 
ters any  more  than  she  had  in  musical  ones. 
Thus  she  writes : 

I  can  remember  speaking  to  Maria  about  mending  her 
clothes,  particularly  her  stockings,  and  becoming  con- 
scious at  the  moment  of  a  long  rent  in  my  own  stocking, 
which  I  had  torn  that  morning  in  putting  it  on  and  had 
not  had  time  to  change.  I  laughed  and  showed  the  rent  to 
the  girl,  and  spoke  of  my  own  difficulty  in  living  up  to  my 
ideals  when  pressed  by  work.  From  what  she  afterward 
said  about  this  to  some  one  else  I  know  that  I  carried  my 
point  with  more  effect  by  this  admission. 

Closely  related  to  this  habit  of  introducing  an 
element  of  give  and  take  even  into  her  admoni- 
tions, and  bringing  to  mind  Miss  Sullivan's 
policy,  was  the  case  worker's  determination  to  be 
honest  and  frank — to  give  the  real  reason  for  a 
decision  wherever  this  was  possible. 
40 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

Maria  questioned  me  one  day  in  my  earlier  contacts 
with  her  about  her  trips  to  the  hospital  for  treatment.  I 
told  her  about  syphilis,  about  the  fact  that  the  hospital 
had  never  been  willing  to  state  whether  her  case  was  con- 
genital or  acquired  in  very  early  infancy.  I  stated  that 
the  usual  causes  of  syphilis  were  promiscuity  and  ex- 
posure to  an  infected  person,  and  also  spoke  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  accidental  infection. 

This  habit  of  giving  the  true  answer  to  ques- 
tions did  not  mean  that  the  guardian  always  told 
all  she  knew  as  soon  as  she  knew  it.  On  the  con- 
trary, she  found  that  Maria's  respect  increased 
for  her  when  she  proved  to  be  hard  to  deceive, 
when  she  was  able  occasionally  to  surprise  her 
charge  by  a  piece  of  information  supposed  to  be 
undiscovered.  To  give  all  the  freedom  that  by 
any  chance  her  ward  could  make  right  use  of, 
but  to  give  this  freedom  under  such  conditions 
that  she  herself  could  get  a  pretty  clear  idea  of 
what  that  use  was,  had  proved  the  best  policy. 
At  one  time,  for  instance,  a  young  Pole  appeared 
on  the  scene  whom  Maria  threatened  to  marry 
unless  she  could  have  a  new  hat  at  once.  By  a 
judicious  arrangement  with  her  employer  cover- 
ing permitted  calls  and  attentions  from  this 
41 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

young  man,  and  by  providing  clothing  in  due 
season  and  not  before,  the  small  crisis  was  suc- 
cessfully passed. 

This  case  worker's  wise  handling  of  Maria, 
however,  all  comes  back  to  the  gift  of  imaginative 
sympathy,  such  as  was  shown  when  she  sent  one 
of  the  girl's  class  compositions  to  a  periodical 
for  young  people.  The  composition  was  ac- 
cepted by  the  editor  with  a  small  payment  in 
return,  and  its  acceptance  meant  a  great  deal 
to  the  young  writer. 

One  cannot  help  wondering  what  Maria  would 
be  like  today  if  the  court  had  treated  the  fact 
of  larceny  in  a  merely  routine  way,  without 
taking  into  account  the  social  background 
brought  to  light  by  the  probation  officer,  and 
had  pronounced  the  usual  sentence  for  that 
particular  offense.  A  very  different  girl  would 
now  be  crossing  the  threshold  into  womanhood — 
untruthful,  hard,  perhaps  depraved.  As  it  is, 
she  faces  the  future  with  the  advantages  of  a 
high  school  education,  with  good  health,  an  at- 
tractive personality,  and  a  number  of  real  friends 
who  trust  her.  She  is  not  a  perfect  mortal,  of 
42 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

course;  she  is  still  somewhat  restless  at  times, 
still  magnifies  the  importance  of  trifles,  and  is 
still  too  fond  of  finery.  But  on  the  whole  her 
sense  of  values  is  an  adjusted  sense;  her  ideas 
are  no  longer  confused  and  unreasonable. 


GEORGE   FOSTER 

A  young  American,  little  George  Foster,  had 
been  placed  with  his  sister  in  an  institution  for 
children  and  then  had  been  returned  to  his 
parents  no  less  than  four  times  in  five  years. 
Even  under  favorable  circumstances  these  re- 
peated changes  of  environment  are  bad  for  chil- 
dren, but  the  home  to  which  George  and  his 
sister  went  back  was  not  really  a  home  at  all. 
The  father  was  a  drunken  bully  who  worked 
irregularly;  the  mother  was  promiscuous  sex- 
ually; the  pair  were  not  even  married.  When 
they  quarreled  and  fought,  as  they  often  did, 
children  and  household  were  neglected. 

Finally,  acting  upon  a  request  from  the  local 
overseer  of  the  poor,  a  child-placing  society 
which  had  its  headquarters  many  miles  away 
43 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

from  the  Foster  family  undertook  to  find  a  free 
home  for  both  children.* 

In  selecting  such  a  home,  the  family's  reason 
for  wanting  a  child  and  their  plans  for  his  edu- 
cation and  future  are  very  carefully  gone  into 
by  the  case  workers  of  the  society,  who  also 
study  the  make-up  of  the  household,  the  char- 
acteristics and  health  of  each  member,  and  the 
relation  of  each  to  all  the  others.  The  family 
finances  have  to  be  known,  the  physical  char- 
acteristics and  surroundings  of  the  home,  to- 
gether with  the  family's  standing  in  their  neigh- 
borhood and  community,  and  their  church 
affiliations.  In  fact,  the  study  of  a  home  about 
to  receive  a  child  calls  for  no  small  degree  of 
social  experience.  Good  placement  usually  pro- 
vides a  dependent  child  without  even  one  re- 
sponsible parent  with  the  best  possible  chance  of 

*  A  "free  home"  is  one  in  a  private  family,  where  the 
placed-out  child  becomes  a  member  of  the  household 
whether  or  not  its  legal  adoption  is  contemplated ;  the  term 
distinguishes  this  type  of  home  from  a  "boarding  home," 
where  the  family  receives  compensation  for  the  child's 
care,  and  from  "working  homes,"  such  as  the  households  in 
which  Maria  Bielowski  lived  while  she  attended  school. 

44 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

well-being  and  development,  whereas  careless,  un- 
intelligent placement  gives  him  no  chance  at  all. 
The  first  placement  of  the  Foster  children  was 
not  wholly  successful.  It  was  with  plain  farmer 
folk.  The  farmer's  wife  was  not  in  good  health, 
and  the  care  of  two  children  might  have  been  a 
burden  to  her  under  any  circumstances,  though 
the  chief  difficulty  was  in  the  relation  of  the  two 
children  to  one  another.  Following  the  practice 
of  their  parents,  perhaps,  they  quarreled  con- 
tinually, thus  bringing  out  each  other's  worst 
qualities  and  irritating  their  foster  mother. 
George  was  nine  at  this  time,  an  affectionate 
but  high-tempered  child,  whereas  his  sister, 
nearly  three  years  his  senior,  had  all  the  char- 
acteristics of  a  self-assertive,  middle-aged  gossip. 
Consequently,  after  several  visits  by  the  so- 
ciety's agent  to  the  farm  and  to  the  nearby 
school  that  the  children  attended,  it  was  decided 
to  remove  both  children  and  place  them  separ- 
ately. This  latter  decision  was  not  made  lightly ; 
it  was  contrary  to  the  society's  usual  policy. 
From  this  point  George's  story  is  the  only  one 
that  I  shall  attempt  to  follow.  He  was  deeply 
45 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

distressed  at  the  thought  of  leaving  the  farm, 
but  the  visitor  encouraged  him  to  talk  about  all 
the  things  he  had  enjoyed  there — the  hay  mak- 
ing, the  chickens,  the  garden — and  made  him 
realize  that  he  was  not  parting  with  these  pleas- 
ures for  good. 

At  this  time  George  was  brought  to  the  city 
in  which  the  children's  society  had  its  head- 
quarters, and  advantage  was  taken  of  this  op- 
portunity to  stucly_the  child's  needs  more  care- 
fully than  had  been  possible  earlier.  He  was 
given  a  thorough  physical  and  mental  testing 
and  was  found  to  have  good^  native  capacity. 
At  a  temporary  home  where  the  child  was  placed 
under  expert  observation  for  a  while,  he  was 
reported  to  have  a  stubborn  streak,  but  "when 
he  once  understands  that  he  can  gain  nothing 
by  his  bad  temper,  he  will  be  a  very  sweet, 
attractive  little  boy.  .  .  .  He  is  happy 
most  of  the  time,  and  gets  over  his  'bad  times' 
much  more  quickly  than  he  did  at  first." 

In  a  few  months  it  was  felt  by  the  society 
that  George  was  ready  for  another  free  home. 
This  time  an  application  had  come  from  a  child- 

46 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

less  couple  living  in  the  outskirts  of  a  small 
town,  who  had  adopted  a  boy  of  seven  and 
wished  to  take  another  somewhat  older.  On 
visiting  this  home  the  society's  field  agent  was 
careful  to  keep  in  mind  the  adopted  child's 
probable  attitude  toward  a  foster  brother. 
She  also  visited  fellow- townsmen  given  as 
references,  and,  when  these  proved  satisfactory, 
gave  the  family  a  chance  to  make  a  tentative 
choice  among  several  available  boys  whose 
pictures  she  was  able  to  show.  George's  picture 
was  the  one  selected,  and  further  details  about 
him  were  sent  by  mail.  Soon  he  was  established 
in  this  new  home.  In  the  case  worker's  visits 
to  him  there  she  gave  each  of  his  foster  parents 
ample  opportunity  to  talk  over  recent  develop- 
ments and  difficulties,  and  afterwards  saw  George 
separately  and  visited  his  school.  During  all 
these  visits  there  were  adjustments  to  be  made 
between  George  and  the  adopted  child  and 
between  George  and  his  foster  father. 

This  was  in  the  influenza  year.    The  boy  had 
a  bad  attack  of  the  disease,  which  left  him  with 
a  cough  and  tubercular  infection.    The  society's 
47 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

field  wQrker  repeatedly  visited  his  doctor  during 
this  time.  Gradually  the  condition  in  George's 
lungs  cleared  up.  Meanwhile,  his  foster  parents, 
though  good  to  him,  began  to  feel,  for  financial 
and  other  reasons,  that  the  care  being  given  to 
this  second  boy  prevented  their  doing  all  that 
they  wished  to  do  for  their  adopted  son,  and 
once  again  it  became  necessary  for  the  society 
to  uproot  their  young  charge.  Allowing  for 
the  many  changes,  he  had  done  fairly  well  in 
school.  By  the  time  he  was  twelve  he  had  made 
the  fifth  grade. 

The  third  free  home  has  proved  a  much  hap- 
pier place  for  George  Foster  than  any  he  has 
yet  known  in  his  brief  but  somewhat  stormy 
career.  He  has  lived  for  more  than  a  year  now 
in  the  family  of  a  professional  man  in  which 
there  are  several  young  people  but  no  other  chil- 
dren. At  first  they  thought  they  could  not  keep 
him;  he  was  not  always  respectful  to  his  elders 
and  was  not  doing  well  in  school.  But  he  was 
old  enough  to  be  reasoned  with  and,  in  an  ad- 
mirable interview  with  him,  the  case  worker 
succeeded  in  taking  him  into  partnership  in  the 

48 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

task  of  straightening  out  his  relations  both  with 
the  members  of  the  household  and  with  his 
teachers.  Meanwhile,  the  family  were  persuaded 
to  adopt  less  exacting  standards  of  what  a  boy  of 
twelve  should  be  expected  to  enjoy  in  the  matter 
of  improving  literature.  Ever  since  this  pivotal 
visit  there  has  been  steady  improvement  in 
George's  behavior  and  enhanced  appreciation 
on  the  part  of  his  foster  parents  of  his  good 
points.  His  health  is  now  excellent.  He  seems 
to  have  a  special  aptitude  for  music,  and  recently 
has  been  taking  music  lessons. 


49 


Ill 

SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 
(Continued) 

'HpHE  illustrations  given  in  the  preceding 
*  chapter  are  of  case  work  confined  to  one 
individual.  It  was  necessary,  of  course,  to  win 
the  co-operation  of  the  families  in  which  Maria 
Bielowski  and  George  Foster  were  placed,  and 
it  was  necessary  during  treatment  to  utilize  the 
skill  of  experts  of  various  kinds,  but  Maria  was 
removed  from  her  own  home  and  did  not  return 
to  it,  while  not  only  was  George  permanently 
separated  from  his  own  people  but,  when  he 
and  his  sister  could  not  agree,  he  was  placed  in  a 
separate  home.  The  case  workers  whose  services 
have  been  described  in  these  two  instances  had 
many  other  tasks  and  other  clients  to  deal  with, 
but  each  had  only  one  client  in  the  two  cases 
under  review.  The  narratives  that  follow 
illustrate,  in  each  instance,  the  treatment  of  two 
50 


? 

SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

or  more  clients  instead  of  one,  and  their  treat- 
ment in  relation  to  one  another. 

MR.  AND  MRS.  RUPERT  YOUNG 

Six  years  ago,  the  Rupert  Youngs,  a  married 
couple  of  twenty-five  and  twenty  with  a  child  of 
less  than  two  years,  lived  in  a  crowded  western 
city  containing  many  social  agencies.  They  were 
referred  to  a  district  secretary  of  the  local  family 
welfare  society.  In  contrast  with  Miss  Sullivan's 
sole  charge,  the  staff  of  this  district  office  was 
responsible  that  year  for  the  social  treatment  of 
more  than  four  hundred  families.* 

Though  the  district  was  in  the  heart  of  a  city 
growing  rapidly,  its  own  population  was  decreas- 
ing. At  the  time  of  which  I  write  the  neighbor- 
hood contained  many  saloons  and  employed  cas- 
ual labor  chiefly. 

One  day  a   Protestant   church  worker   tele- 

*  These  are  figures  of  a  panic  year.  The  secretary  had  at 
that  time  four  assistant  case  workers  and  a  dietitian,  but 
much  better  case  work  was  possible  after  the  industrial  de- 
pression receded  and  the  yearly  totals  of  the  office  had 
fallen,  as  they  did  before  the  war  was  over,  to  a  little  over 
two  hundred  families. 


51 


ft 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

phoned  that  Mrs.  Young  was  having  trouble  with 
her  husband.  A  visitor  was  sent — a  man — who 
found  the  family  evicted  for  nonpayment  of  rent, 
all  their  furniture  taken  by  an  instalment  dealer 
because  a  third  of  it  had  not  been  paid  for,  Mrs. 
Young  and  her  little  girl  staying  with  her  mother 
temporarily,  and  Mr.  Young,  badly  unnerved  by 
the  after-effects  of  a  drunken  spree,  sleeping  at 
night  in  a  stable.  The  visilor  arranged  for  Mrs. 
Young  to  have  a  private  talk  with  the  district 
secretary  at  her  office  the  next  day,  and  for  the 
husband  to  do  the  same  at  a  later  hour. 

In  this  office  interview  the  wife,  who  was  three 
months  pregnant,  seemed  quite  unequal  to  meet- 
ing the  crisis  in  her  affairs.  Her  relatives  and 
friends  had  advised  her  to  have  nothing  more  to 
do  with  her  husband  and  to  take  court  action 
against  him.  She  was  given  every  chance  to  tell 
her  side  of  the  story,  and  it  was  explained  to  her 
that  the  secretary  wished  to  hear  the  man's  side 
also. 

When  Young  arrived  he  was  in  a  repentant 
mood ;  he  admitted  the  drink,  admitted  striking 
Hilda,  his  wife,  but  claimed  in  extenuation  that 
52 


• 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

everybody's  hand  was  against  him  and  that 
Hilda  nagged  him.  He  agreed,  in  answer  to  ques- 
tions, that  he  had  a  good  wife  who  kept  a  good 
home,  that  he  loved  and  was  proud  of  his  child, 
but,  though  acknowledging  that  the  fundamental 
trouble  was  with  himself,  complained  that  his 
mother-in-law  was  partly  to  blame.  He  was 
given  money  with  which  to  buy  his  supper  and 
breakfast,  also  a  letter  to  a  doctor  asking  for  a 
physical  examination,  and  was  told  to  report  at 
the  public  non-support  bureau  the  following 
morning,  where  Mrs.  Young  and  the  district 
secretary  would  meet  him.  Young,  who  was  a 
Catholic,  arrived  with  a  pledge  of  total  absti- 
nence taken  before  a  priest.  (This  was  his  own. 
idea.)  The  program  agreed  upon  at  that  con- 
ference was  as  follows :  (i)  That  the  husband  and 
wife  should  stay  apart  for  a  while;  (2)  that  Mrs. 
Young  and  her  little  girl  should  have  a  month's 
rest  in  the  country;  (3)  that  Young  (reported  by 
the  doctor  to  be  suffering  from  nothing  but  over- 
stimulation) should,  if  possible,  be  sent  away 
from  home  for  a  few  weeks ;  (4)  that  both  should 
stop  discussing  their  domestic  difficulties  with 
53 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

the  "in-laws"  on  both  sides  of  the  house  or  with 
any  one  save  the  secretary;  (5)  that  Mrs.  Young 
should  avoid  getting  into  arguments  with  her 
husband.    This  was  a  failing  of  hers. 

In  less  than  twenty-four  hours,  agreements  (4) 
and  (5)  had  both  been  broken  by  Mrs.  Young, 
and  as  for  Young,  his  mind  ran  along  "unrea- 
sonable paths,"  catching  on  such  small  points  as 
his  fear  that  his  wife  would  not  write  to  him 
while  she  was  in  the  country.  He  was  given  work 
at  washing  the  office  windows  that  day ;  care  was 
taken  to  see  that  he  had  ample  food,  and  a 
further  medical  examination  was  arranged  for, 
this  time  at  a  mental  clinic.  Here  hot  and  cold 
baths  were  recommended,  with  no  drink,  liquid 
diet,  and  tobacco  in  moderation.  Delirium 
tremens  was  feared  at  first  but  it  did  not  develop, 
and  in  less  than  two  weeks  the  district  office  had 
secured  his  admission  to  a  country  home  for 
inebriates  in  another  state.  Mrs.  Young  had 
promised  that  she  would  write  nothing  in  her  let- 
ters to  him  that  would  lead  to  further  arguments. 
Soon  he  was  cutting  down  pine  trees  on  the  farm 
of  the  Home  and  writing  that  he  "could  lick 
54 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

Wilard  the  Champian  of  the  World."  Frequent 
letters  to  him  from  the  district  office  seemed  to  be 
a  necessary  part  of  his  treatment.  As  the  effects 
of  the  alcohol  wore  off,  it  became  evident  that 
Rupert  was  a  temperamental  individual  of  al- 
most childlike  af£ectk>natenessr  easily  led,  but 
with  little  stability.  In  other  words,  drink  was 
not  his  only  difficulty.  Some  who  read  his  record 
a  year  later  felt  that  he  should  have  been  labelled 
"feeble-minded,"  but  the  Mental  Clinic  did  not 
make  that  term  a  part  of  their  diagnosis,  and 
probably  it  is  just  as  well  that  they  did  not.  He 
sent  several  boxes  of  flowers  to  the  district  office. 
If  they  were  not  acknowledged  instantly  he 
would  be  much  distressed.  "Howe  did  your 
mother  like  them,"  he  wrote  to  the  district  secre- 
tary; "i  bet  she  was  tickled  to  death  with 
them." 

Two  months  after  the  troubles  of  the  Youngs 
had  been  reported  to  the  family  society  they  were 
back  in  town,  a  good  part  of  their  furniture  had 
been  reclaimed  from  the  dealer  without  further 
payment,  a  small  home  had  been  established,  and 
Rupert  was  at  work  on  a  temporary  job.  A  little 
55 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

later  he  returned  to  his  regular  employment  of 
driving  a  team.  The  social  case  record  of  earlier 
days  would  have  ended  at  this  point  with,  per- 
haps, the  following  description  of  the  home  added : 

Mrs.  Young  and  [her  little  daughterl  at  home.  Front 
room  had  been  fixed  up  with  some  old  prints,  one  or  two 
runner  rugs,  and  a  few  other  things  that  made  it  appear 
homelike.  The  kitchen  also  had  a  strong  home  atmos- 
phere. The  wash  tubs  had  been  painted  by  Mr.  Young. 
The  dish  cupboard    ....    was  full  of  shining  dishes 

Mr.  Young  came  in,  it  being  lunch  hour, 

carrying  a  load  of  wood  on  his  shoulder.  He  showed  a 
good  deal  of  pride  in  what  his  wife  had  accomplished  in 
the  way  of  making  the  house  look  like  home,  and  also  in 
his  own  handiwork  as  a  painter. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  social  treatment 
had  only  begun.  A  number  of  difficulties  were 
yet  to  be  overcome,  some  minor  and  some  funda- 
mental. The  difference  in  background  and  in 
religion  between  the  two  sets  of  relatives — 
Young's  were  Irish-American  and  Catholic,  while 
Hilda's  were  German-American  and  Protestant; 
the  habit  some  of  his  relatives  indulged  in  of 
tempting  him  to  drink;  her  tendency  to  argue 
and  scold — were  factors  to  be  kept  in  mind.    A 

56 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

week  after  the  home  had  been  re-established 
Hilda  had  to  be  reminded  that  the  only  way  to 
get  on  in  married  life  was  to  overlook  little  things 
and  to  co-operate.  At  the  birth  of  the  second 
child  Hilda  would  not  go  to  a  hospital  nor  would 
she  have  a  doctor  at  home,  preferring  to  make 
her  own  arrangements  with  a  midwife.  This 
preference  was  costly  later,  for  to  it  may  be 
traced  the  ill  health  that  followed. 

Most  serious,  however,  was  Rupert's  irrespon- 
sibility in  a  number  of  small  ways.  He  was  in- 
definite in  his  statements  and  lax  in  meeting 
obligations,  easily  slipping  from  under  them, 
sometimes  with  an  untruth.  When  the  second 
baby  came  he  insisted  upon  staying  at  home  for 
more  than  a  week,  and  in  consequence  lost  a 
steady  job.    The  district  secretary  records: 

Mr.  Young  has  still  not  been  to  work.  Makes  all  sorts 
of  excuses  ....  though  we  were  willing  to  see  that 
the  necessary  help  was  provided  [to  care  for  his  wife] .  In 
his  boyish,  inconsequential  way  he  tries  to  play  up  what  a 
wonderful  family  man  he  is.  He  has  used  this  illness  [of 
his  wife's]  to  take  a  little  rest  himself,  and  shows  he  has  a 
long  way  to  go  yet  before  he  has  any  real,  keen  sense  of 
responsibility. 

57 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Of  the  methods  used  to  overcome  these  char- 
acter defects,  the  first  was  friendly  talks  with 
Rupert  at  frequent  intervals.  The  district  secre- 
tary's prompt  service  when  family  affairs  had 
been  at  their  worst  gave  her  a  strong  influence 
over  him.  He  was  still  more  or  less  unstable  as 
time  went  on,  but  he  hated  to  displease  her.  The 
second  method  was  to  develop  and  make  the 
most  olhis  affection  for  his  family  and  his  home. 
He  was  not  allowed  to  forget  the  health  program 
mapped  out  for  him,  including  the  baths,  but  the 
chief  reliance  of  the  social  workers  interested  was 
to  keep  the  home  in  the  foreground.  When 
bickerings  were  uppermost,  husband  and  wife 
lived  only  in  an  irritated  present  in  which  every- 
thing was  wrong,  but  when  they  compared  notes 
about  their  first-born,  they  at  once  began  to  look 
to  the  future  and  to  agree  that  their  little  girl 
was  not  only  .he  prettiest  child  in  the  neighbor- 
hood but  that  she  must  have  the  prettiest  clothes 
and  the  best  education.  The  district  secretary 
took  a  snapshot  picture  of  the  child  and  had  it 
enlarged  and  framed  for  her  to  give  to  her  father. 
Meanwhile,  Hilda  made  gains,  acquiring  more 

58 


f  •    # 

SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

self-control  and  becoming  the  real  head  of  the 
household.  Rupert's  proudest  boast  was  that  he 
no  longer  argued  with  his  mother-in-law. 

Within  the  last  six  years  the  Youngs  have 
passed  through  two  other  crises  without  a  break 
in  their  home  life — the  baby  was  killed  in  an  acci- 
dent, and  for  a  while  Hilda  was  in  very  poor 
health.  During  the  first  of  these  crises  the  dis- 
trict secretary  was  with  them  a  great  deal;  be- 
fore the  second  she  had  gone  to  another  city  to 
live,  and,  save  for  a  visit  at  very  long  intervals, 
knows  their  affairs  now  only  through  occasional 
correspondence.  Rupert  has  not  always  kept  his 
pledge,  but  has  never  slipped  back  to  the  old 
state  of  demoralization.  At  the  present  writing 
they  are  holding  their  gains ;  he  has  steady  work, 
and  the  home  is  now  one  of  four  rooms  instead  of 
two.  £ 

CLARA  VANSCA  AND  HER  CHILDREN 

Clara  Vansca  kept  a  filthy,  vermin-infested 
home,  supported  partly  by  begging,  partly  by  the 
earnings  of  a  drinking  husband.    When  the  fam- 
ily welfare  society — one  in  an  eastern  city  this 
59 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

time — first  made  her  acquaintance  ten  years  ago, 
she  was  sending  the  older  of  her  two  children,  a 
girl  of  eight,  to  the  city  dump  to  collect  iron  and 
scraps.  These  she  sold  for  drink.  Three  years 
later  her  husband  was  placed  in  an  insane  asylum 
where,  save  for  one  very  brief  interval,  he  has 
been  ever  since.  After  Vansca's  commitment  his 
wife  begged  more  than  ever,  going  on  these  expe- 
ditions after  dark  and  usually  taking  the  children 
with  her.  She  told  a  pitiful  story,  most  of  it 
true,  and  always  asked  for  work  but  never  took 
any  of  the  places  offered  to  her.  At  this  time  all 
attempts  to  induce  her  to  stop  drinking  and  to  aid 
her  to  care  for  her  home  and  the  two  little  girls 
were  without  avail.  She  seemed  genuinely  fond 
of  them  but  they  were  shamefully  neglected. 
At  last,  through  a  child-protective  agency,  both 
children  were  placed  by  the  court  in  a  Catholic 
institution,  and  their  mother  was  induced  by  the 
family  society  already  mentioned  to  go  volun- 
tarily to  a  convent. 

It  was  at  this  point  that  the  social  case  treat- 
ment of  Mrs.  Vansca  may  be  said  to  have  begun. 
Undertaken  by  A.  B.,  the  district  assistant  in  the 
60 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

family  society,  it  has  been  carried  forward  by  her 
uninterruptedly  ever  since. 

A.  B.  had  discovered  only  one  asset  in  the  situa- 
tion; namely,  Mrs.  Vangca's  fondness-for  her 
children.  Building  upon  this  she  proposed  to  her 
somewhat  later  the  following  plan:  The  home 
could  be  re-established  provided  she  did  her  best 
to  learn  all  that  the  Sisters  at  the  convent  tried 
to  teach  her,  and  provided,  further,  that  she 
proved  herself  able  later  on  to  earn  steadily  in 
the  community  when  free  from  restraint.  The 
Sister  Superior  understood  this  plan  and  helped 
to  keep  it  before  Mrs.  Vansca  as  a  goal  to  strive 
toward.  The  Sister  also  reported  to  A.  B.  from 
time  to  time  upon  the  personajjcharacteristics  of 
her  charge  as  they  were  revealed  in  the  convent 
day  by  day.  Meanwhile,  A.  B.  studied  her 
client's  background  more  carefully  than  had  been 
possible  before;  and  in  the  course  of  doing  this 
made  the  acquaintance  of  a  group  of  relatives. 

Clara  Vansca  was  born  in  this  country;  her 
parents  had  come  to  America  from  Lower  Aus- 
tria. The  father  died  while  she  was  still  a  little 
child,  and  her  mother,  placing  her  in  an  institu- 
61 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

tion,  had  married  again  but  had  died  before 
Clara  was  grown.  Clara  had  several  brothers,  all 
of  whom  had  prospered;  two  who  had  married 
were  found  to  be  maintainingxoiniortable  work- 
men's homes.  This  gave  A.  B.  more  faith  in  her 
client's  physical  and  social  inheritance;  evidently 
the  family  came  of  good  stock  and  had  good 
traditions.  But  their  attitude  toward  this  sister 
had  been  one  of  impatient  disapproval.  By  her 
waywardness  before  her  marriage  and  her  con- 
duct since,  they  felt  that  she  had  disgraced  them. 
As  a  child  she  had  not  had  the  influence  of  a 
home,  and  later  attempts  to  discipline  her  had 
not  been  happy  (one  brother  had  whipped  her 
when  she  was  well  grown) ;  later  still  the  family 
had  all  disowned  her. 

One  result  of  A.  B.'s  visits  to  Mrs.  Vansca's 
people  was  to  renew,  theii;  interest  in  their  sister. 
In  fact,  one  of  the  married  brothers  offered  to 
give  her  and  her  children  a  home  as  soon  as  she 
was  ready  to  leave  the  convent.  But  A.  B.  rea- 
lized the  long  struggle  ahead  and  did  not  act  upon 
this  proposal.  She  felt  that,  with  the  best  of  in- 
tentions, the  brothers  and  their  wives,  lacking 
62 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

the  experience  to  deal  with  so  difficult  a  problem, 
would  be  impatient  with  her  client  and  perhaps 
spoil  everything,  though  at  a  later  stage  in  treat- 
ment their  sympathy  and  interest  could  probably 
be  utilized  fully. 

When,  at  the  end_oi ^  year,  A.  B.  had  found 
suitable  work  for  Mrs.  Vansca  outside  the  con- 
vent, her  first  care  was  to  see  that  her  client 
looked  presentable  and  that  she  was  in  good 
physical  condition.  Her  teeth  were  given  thor- 
ough attention  and  the  scarf  that  she  had  worn 
over  her  head  habitually  was  replaced  by  a  hat — 
a  symbol,  as  it  were,  of  her  changed  estate.  Her 
wages  were  to  be  paid  toJt^B.,  who  was  to  save 
them  toward  the  furnishijig^of  the  new  home.  At 
the  end  of  sixunpre  months,  amid  great  rejoicing, 
the  two  little  girls  were  taken  out  of  the  orphan- 
age and  the  home  was  re-established. 

The  succeeding  year  was  a  difficult  one  for  the 
family  and  for  A.  B.  The  latter  arranged  with 
the  district  office  that,  no  matter  where  she 
might  be,  if  a  telephone  message  came  from  Mrs. 
Vansca's  landlady  that  her  tenant  was  drinking 
again,  she  was  to  be  notified  at  once.    Night  or 

63 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

clay,  no  matter  what  she  was  doing,  she  hastened 
to  her  tempted  client.  One  night  in  zero  weather 
they  walked  the  streets  together  for  a  long  time 
so  that  Mrs.  Vansca  might  be  sober  enough  to 
work  the  next  day. 

The  turning  point  came  when  the  sixth  place 
of  employment  had  to  be  found  for  this  client 
within  the  year.  Her  work  had  been  well  done, 
thanks  to  the  convent  training,  but  some  days 
she  had  come  late  and  other  days  had  not  come 
at  all.  A.  B.  made  it  clear  that  failure  in  this 
sixth  place  would  mean  the  loss  of  the  children 
again.  She  must  no  longer  borrow  money  from 
employers  or  fellow-workers,  and  she  must  let 
her  wages  be  sent  to  A.  B.  to  be  expended  for  her 
benefit.  This  arrangement  was  modified  on  Mrs. 
Vansca's  promise  to  deliver  the  pay  envelope  her- 
self, and  with  a  few  slips  she  did  this  for  several 
years,  giving  up  her  wages  intact.  The  sixth  em- 
ployer proved  forgiving  and  helpful.  He  was 
often  in  communication  with  A.  B.,  and  together 
they  were  able  to  reduce  the  frequency  of  his 
employe's  lapses.     She  is  still  working  at  this 


64 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

same  place,  where  she  particularly  enjoys  the 
comradeship  of  her  fellow- workers. 

To  return,  however,  to  the  earlier  years  of 
treatment,  everything  was  done  by  A.  B.  to  en- 
courage the  home  instinct,  strong  in  Mrs.  Vansca, 
but  overlaid  for  a  long  while  by  her  early  institu- 
tional experiences  and  by  the  unhappy  outcome 
of  her  married  life.  She  had  certain  half-days  at 
home  from  her  work,  and  took  pleasure  in  teach- 
ing the  children  to  make  the  embroidery  which 
she  had  learned  to  do  so  well  in  the  convent.  An 
expert  seamstress  voluntarily  gave  the  children 
home  lessons  every  other  week  in  sewing  and  in 
cutting  out  garments.  Later,  a  dietitian  gave 
both  children  and  mother  cooking  lessons  at 
home.  Mrs.  Vansca  was  encouraged  to  make  her 
rooms  clean  and  attractive,  and  to  keep  the  chil- 
dren in  excellent  physical  condition  and  well 
dressed.    This  last  she  dearly  loved  to  do. 

Then  the  relatives,  who  could  not  be  given  an 
important  part  earlier,  were  shown  the  wonder- 
ful improvement  in  mother  and  children.  Their 
faith  in  Clara  having  been  re-established,  they 
were  asked  to  see  much  of  the  children,  besides 
5  65 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

being  urged  to  exchange  visits  with  the  mother 
on  equal  terms.  It  was  on  equal  terms  that  the 
family  connection  met  in  the  church  of  which  all 
were  regular  attendants.  The  relatives  have  been 
helpful  in  many  ways,  but  a  suggestion  made  by 
one  of  the  brothers  has  had  to  be  set  aside.  He 
has  recently  bought  a  farm  and  wants  to  bring 
Vansca  home  from  the  asylum  and  to  have  the 
whole  Vansca  family  help  run  the  place. 

Close  watch  has  had  to  be  kept  of  the  children's 
school  records.  Although  neither  is  a  very  good 
student,  both  are  at  least  able  to  help  their 
mother  prepare  the  itemized  account  of  her 
household  expenses — a  task  beyond  her,  unaided. 

A.  B.  became  so  good  a  friend  that  she  could 
talk  to  Mrs.  Vansca  freely  about  her  occasional 
lapses  and,  when  the  family  had  to  move,  could 
say,  "Remember  that  you  are  going  into  a  new 
neighborhood  where  no  one  knows  of  your  former 
habits.  Here  is  an  opportunity  to  earn  every 
one's  respect."  Every  one's  respect  became  a 
precious  possession  as  the  children  began  to  grow 
up.  Rosa,  the  elder  of  the  two,  is  a  good-looking 
girl,  and  Mrs.  Vansca  has  become  more  than  ever 
66 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

a  mother  since  the  lads  of  the  neighborhood  have 
been  paying  court  to  her  daughter.  A.  B.  attrib- 
utes the  complete  cessation  of  the  mother's 
drinking  to  this  new  senses-responsibility.  For 
three  years  she  has  been  perfectly  sober. 

During  Rosa's  last  years  at  school  the  girl  did 
light  work  at  service  out  of  school  hours  and  was 
taught  how  to  spend  her  earnings  and  how  to 
save  them.  When  at  last  she  had  $300  in  the 
bank,  she  was  encouraged  to  look  ahead  and  try 
to  make  it  $500,  though  she  was  also  encouraged 
to  take  some  of  the  burden  off  of  her  mother's 
shoulders  by  paying  for  her  younger  sister's 
clothes.  Mother  and  daughter  now  earn  about 
$90  a  month,  over  and  above  Rosa's  board,  and 
as  soon  as  there  are  $500  in  the  bank,  Rosa  plans 
to  begin  buying  a  home  for  the  three  of  them. 

If  this  account  seems  to  emphasize  the  mate- 
rial gains — the  fact  that  Mrs.  Vansca  has  held 
one  part-time  position  for  between  six  and  seven 
years,  the  savings,  the  long  process  of  teaching 
her  to  spend  her  earnings  wisely,  the  prospect  of 
buying  a  home,  and  so  on — there  are  neverthe- 
less other  gains,  some  of  them  even  more  impor- 

67 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

tant.  There  have  been  camping  experiences  for 
Rosa,  trips  to  the  seashore  for  all  the  family,  and 
occasional  picnics.  When  Rosa  was  graduated 
and  wore  the  white  gown  made  with  her  own 
hands  to  the  house  of  her  admiring  relatives,  her 
mother's  cup  ran  over.  There  have  been  spirit- 
ual gains  of  the  greatest  significance  that  are  not 
so  easy  to  illustrate.  The  church  now  holds  an 
important  place  in  the  family  life;  and  Mrs. 
Vansca,  often  secretive  and  untrustworthy  in  the 
old  days,  has  become  franker,  more  cheerful, 
more  dependable.  Some  time  ago,  following  an 
old  habit,  she  said  to  A.  B.,  "You  may  ask  Mrs. 
So-and-so  if  what  I  say  is  not  true."  To  which  it 
was  possible  for  A.  B.  to  reply,  "Never  ask  me  to 
verify  anything  you  tell  me  again.  I  trust  you 
absolutely." 

WINIFRED  JONES  AND  HER  CHILDREN 

In  contrast  to  Clara  Vansca,  the  subject  of  my 
next  illustration,  Winifred  Jones,  a  widow  in  her 
forties  with  five  children,  came  of  stock  that  had 
been  in  America  for  generations  back.  Her  peo- 
ple had  been  substantial  farmer  folk  in  the  Mid- 
68 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

die  West  who  had  removed  later  to  the  nearest 
large  city,  where  Winifred's  mother  had  died 
when  she  was  only  ten  years  old.  After  the  death 
of  her  mother  her  home  was  not  a  happy  one. 
The  father  was  a  narrow,  exacting  man,  who 
frowned  upon  any  recreation  for  his  four  boys  and 
girls.  Her  oldest  sister  married  early,  leaving 
Winifred  in  charge  of  the  household.  Then  the 
father  married  again  and,  resenting  this  change, 
the  young  housekeeper  also  married  in  her  turn 
to  get  away  from  uncongenial  surroundings, 
though  her  new  home  proved  even  more  unhappy 
than  the.  early  one. 

Thomas  Jones,  her  husband,  was  a  mechanic. 
He  drank,  went  with  other  women,  was  mean  at 
home  in  money  matters,  and  lacked  interest  in 
the  proper  care  and  training  of  his  children. 
The  home  became  more  and  more  disorderly,  the 
children  less  obedient,  and  their  mother  more 
shiftless  in  her  ways.  Meanwhile,  Mrs.  Jones's 
own  people,  grown  impatient,  ceased  to  visit  or 
to  have  anything  whatever  to  do  with  her. 

Whenever  an  added  stroke  of  misfortune  over- 
took the  Joneses,  and  it  often  did  as  the  years 
69 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

passed,  some  social  agency — the  hospital,  the 
church  mission,  the  family  welfare  society,  or  the 
society  to  protect  children  from  cruelty — was 
called  in.  Each  paid  little  or  no  attention  to 
,  back  history  and  much  attention  to  the  dirt  and 
confusion  amid  which  the  dazed  mother  sat  idle. 
The  corner  grocer  assured  each  successive  visitor 
that  Mrs.  Jones  would  always  be  the  same — a 
point  of  view  with  which  they  sympathized.  No 
active  steps  had  been  taken,  however,  to  break 
up  the  home  and  to  give  separate  care  to  its  mem- 
bers. Its  condition  was  unchanged  when  Jones 
died  less  than  two  years  ago. 

Too  short  a  period  has  elapsed  since  the  father's 
death  to  speak  with  certainty  of  the  results 
achieved,  but  I  tell  the  story  here,  though  nec- 
essarily briefly,  not  only  for  the  contrast  it  shows 
between  the  earlier  and  later  approaches  of  social 
agencies  to  a  puzzling  situation,  but  because  it 
illustrates  a  social  worker's  skill  in  reknitting 
family  ties  that  had  long  been  broken. 

The  family  welfare  society  had  cared  for  the 
Joneses  throughout  the  father's  prolonged  illness 
in  a  hospital.  After  his  death  it  became  necessary 
70 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

to  make  some  plan  for  the  future.  There  were 
local  reasons  why  no  widow's  allowance  from 
public  funds  could  be  had.  Aside  from  this,  how- 
ever, should  the  home  be  broken  up  as  a  protec- 
tive measure  or  should  the  mother  be  encouraged 
to  keep  it  together?  No  one  had  at  that  time  any 
clear  picture  of  Mrs.  Jones's  past — she  was  reti- 
cent about  her  relatives,  and  little  or  nothing 
was  known  about  them — but  the  social  workers 
who  had  visited  the  home  knew  that  Mrs.  Jones 
and  her  children  often  slept  very  late,  that  there 
were  no  regular  meal  hours,  that  soiled  cloth- 
ing accumulated,  that  the  dishes  remained  un- 
washed, and  that  the  children  were  not  only  run- 
ning wild  but  were  always  fighting  among  them- 
selves and  always  disrespectful  to  their  mother. 
Mrs.  Jones  said  that  she  had  not  been  on  the 
main  street  of  her  native  city  since  her  marriage 
twenty  years  before.  She  had  no  known  bad 
habits,  was  fond  of  her  children,  apparently,  and 
they  of  her,  but  when  there  was  much  to  be  done 
she  would  sit  with  her  hands  folded,  and  when 
some  one  talked  with  her  would  seem  to  lose  the 
drift  of  the  conversation  at  times  and  then  with 
71 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

difficulty  bring  her  mind  back  later  to  the  sub- 
ject in  hand. 

The  first  attempt  to  get  behind  present  symp- 
toms was  not  very  successful.  An  examining 
specialist  reported  that  Mrs.  Jones  was  a  moron 
with  a  mental  age  of  eleven  years  and  eight 
months,  and  advised  that  the  children  be  removed 
from  her  care.  It  is  not  possible  to  be  sure,  but 
very  likely  this  advice  of  the  examiner  was  based 
partly  upon  reports  by  social  workers  of  the  con- 
ditions they  found  in  the  home. 

As  the  death  of  Mr.  Jones  might  influence  his 
wife's  attitude  toward  life  for  the  better,  and  as 
no  thorough  social  treatment  had  yet  been  given 
a  fair  trial,  the  family  welfare  society  decided 
that  this  was  no  time  to  take  the  momentous  step 
of  breaking  up  the  home  and  separating  its  mem- 
bers. The  social  case  worker  representing  the 
society  adopted  instead  and  simultaneously  two 
courses  of  action:  first,  on  the  assumption  that 
not  all  of  Mrs.  Jones's  trouble  was  congenital,  a 
quiet  search  for  the  cause  or  causes  of  her  inade- 
quacy;  second,  an  active  program  of  stimulation 
and  encouragement  to  discover  how  far  each 
72 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

member  of  the  family  would  respond  to  better 
physical  conditions  and  more  regular  resources. 
This  program  demanded  a  deep  friendly  interest 
in  their  affairs,  the  introduction  into  the  home  of 
those  social  contacts  and  recreational  good  times 
from  which  mother  and  children  had  been  so 
completely  cut  off,  and,  added  to  these  other 
items,  direct  but  patient  suggestion  which  should 
lead,  if  possible,  to  re-education  of  daily  habit 
for  each  member  of  the  family.  A  regular  weekly 
allowance  upon  which  Mrs.  Jones  could  count 
would  not  solve  her  or  the  children's  troubles — 
the  family  dislocation  was  too  serious  for  that — 
but  such  an  allowance  would  be  a  necessary  ad- 
junct to  other  services  on  their  behalf,  and  this 
was  obtained  from  special  funds. 

The  interest  of  a  young  man  who  knew  a  great 
deal  about  boys  was  enlisted  at  this  stage.  In 
repeated  visits  he  found  that  the  two  Jones  boys, 
aged  twelve  and  ten,  were  "running  loose,"  but 
they  did  not  impress  him  as  hard.  The  problem, 
he  felt,  was  to  supply  them  with  wholesome 
amusements  and  interests  and,  at  the  same  time, 
help  them  to  acquire  some  regular  habits  of  eat- 
73 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

ing,  sleeping,  studying,  and  playing.  The  idea 
of  regular  meal  times  was  one  that  the  social 
worker  was  trying  at  this  same  period  to  impress 
upon  their  mother.  While  the  social  worker  was 
giving  the  boys  occasional  help  with  their  lessons 
and  carefully  following  the  school  reports  of  all 
the  children  each  month,  this  young  man  visitor, 
for  whom  they  developed  great  admiration,  took 
them  to  selected  movies,  to  the  museum  of  nat- 
ural history,  to  the  park,  and  saw  that  the 
younger  boy,  who  was  naturally  studious,  had 
books  he  could  enjoy.  Country  vacations  were 
arranged  for  all  the  members  of  the  family  that 
year  and  the  next. 

Meanwhile,  acting  upon  the  advice  of  the  doc- 
tor who  had  made  the  mental  examination,  the 
social  worker  saw  that  Mrs.  Jones's  teeth  and 
eyes  had  careful  attention.  As  she  had  had  some 
difficulty  in  finding  her  way  about  the  city,  the 
worker  accompanied  her  on  the  repeated  jour- 
neys which  had  to  be  made  to  the  dentist's,  and 
was  careful  to  follow  up  these  painful  occasions 
by  some  small  pleasure.  The  health  of  the  next 
to  the  youngest  child,  a  little  girl  of  eight,  also 
74 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

needed  attention.  Her  school  record  had  been 
poor;  after  necessary  adenoid  and  tonsil  opera- 
tions it  continued  so. 

The  history  of  this  social  treatment — neces- 
sarily voluminous  and  detailed,  for  visits  were 
frequent  and  at  different  hours,  including  the 
evening  and  early  morning — shows  no  tendency 
on  the  part  of  the  social  worker  to  lose  patience 
or  to  push  her  client  unduly.  Pressure  was 
steady  but  gentle,  with  frequent  repetitions  of 
each  suggestion  made.  The  attempt  to  help 
Mrs.  Jones  in  the  management  of  her  children 
was  especially  difficult.  Remembering  her  own 
childhood  and  the  strictness  of  her  father,  she 
inclined  to  overindulgence.  After  one  item  of 
household  management  had  been  mastered  an- 
other was  brought  forward,  explained  and  re- 
explained  by  the  social  worker,  while  at  the  same 
time  every  nearer  approach  to  normal  conditions 
was  noted  and  made  much  of.  The  emphasis  of 
the  record  is  upon  assets  throughout,  not  only  in 
the  case  worker's  dealings  with  the  family  but  in 
her  attempts  to  interest  others  in  their  welfare. 
This  has  been  notably  true  in  her  relations  with 

75 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

the  relatives  on  both  sides  of  the  house,  though 
for  some  months  the  only  helpful  one  discovered 
had  been  a  brother  of  Mrs.  Jones. 

The  brother  was  interviewed  soon  after  the 
new  plans  of  treatment  had  been  launched.  He 
had  not  seen  or  heard  from  his  sister  for  years 
and  did  not  wish  to  see  her  then,  feeling  sure 
that  they  would  quarrel.  But  he  at  once  became 
interested  in  the  new  program  explained  to  him 
and  offered  to  bear  a  good  share  of  the  necessary 
weekly  allowance.  There  were  frequent  con- 
ferences with  this  brother.  Gradually  he  told 
many  details  of  Winifred's  early  home  life  which 
gave  the  social  worker  a  better  understanding  of 
her  drawbacks  and  possibilities.  It  came  out,  for 
instance,  that  she  had  been  studious  as  a  child 
and  that  the  family  conjecture  at  that  time  had 
been  that  she  would  become  a  teacher. 

Later,  a  sister  of  Mr.  Jones  was  seen  at  her 
home  in  a  mill  town.  This  sister's  plan,  made 
soon  after  Jones  died,  had  been  to  move  Mrs. 
Jones  and  her  family  near  the  mill  and  put  the 
older  children  at  work  there,  including  the  two 
school  boys  during  vacation.     This  suggestion 

76 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

had  not  been  adopted,  but  after  the  social  work- 
er's visit  friendly  relations  were  re-established 
between  the  families,  and  this  sister  has  also  been 
a  valuable  source  of  information .  Quite  recently, 
other  relatives  have  been  discovered,  but  thus 
far  Mrs.  Jones's  brother  has  continued  to  be  the 
most  useful  one.  As  he  did  not  seem  to  wish  to 
see  his  sister  this  was  not  urged,  but  he  was  often 
given  a  short  account  of  the  society's  plans  and 
of  the  progress  made,  not  omitting  the  interesting- 
things  that  the  young  man  visitor  and  the  two 
boys  were  doing  together.  One  day,  of  his  own 
motion,  he  asked  the  social  worker  to  take  him  to 
pay  a  visit  to  his  sister.  Mrs.  Jones  had  known, 
of  course,  that  he  was  helping  her  regularly,  but 
she  valued  this  visit  even  more  than  his  assist- 
ance, for  it  meant  the  renewal  of  personal  rela- 
tions with  one  of  her  own  people.  It  is  difficult 
to  measure  an  influence  so  subtle,  but  she  seems 
to  have  shown  a  desire  since  then  to  live  up  to 
what  her  brother  knew  that  she  once  was.  His 
first  visit  was  followed  by  many  others.  Soon  the 
brother  began  to  make  suggestions  of  his  own 
about  the  boys  and  the  oldest  girl,  who  was  six- 
77 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

teen  and  had  begun  to  earn  by  this  time.  The 
young  man  who  had  been  visiting  the  boys  was 
forced  by  change  of  occupation  to  cease  any  regu- 
lar visits,  and  this  uncle  took  his  place  to  some 
extent.  At  Christmas  time  he  spent  Christmas 
Eve  with  the  family  and,  as  his  sister  phrased  it, 
"was  a  real  Santa  Claus."  After  that  he  took 
several  of  the  children  separately  on  shopping 
expeditions,  and  when  summer  came,  outfitted 
the  two  boys  handsomely  for  a  camping  trip. 

The  interest  of  all  these  friends  was  concen- 
trated for  a  while  upon  making  the  Jones's  living 
room  a  possible  place  in  which  the  family  might 
have  a  good  time  in  the  evening  and  to  which  the 
children  might  invite  their  playmates.  The  friend 
of  the  boys  had  arranged  for  the  repapering  of 
the  room,  the  social  worker  provided  curtains  and 
a  few  pictures,  and  the  brother  had  some  of  his 
chairs  re-upholstered  for  this  new  home  center. 
Here  was  a  point  at  which  the  children's  interests 
and  their  mother's  could  be  made  one.  The  rec- 
ord reads :  V  Mrs.  Jones  admitted  that  her  oldest 
boy  had  often  asked  to  bring  boy  friends  to  the 
house  in  the  evening,  but  she  had  never  felt  like 
78 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

bothering  with  them.  We  had  a  talk  about  the 
pleasure  of  family  life.  She  has  never  had  the 
real  family  idea,  but  seems  willing  to  begin." 

So  much  for  the  program  of  stimulation  and 
encouragement.  But  what  of  the  causes  of  this 
mental  condition? — for  the  social  worker,  in  all 
her  contacts  with  her  client  and  with  those  who 
used  to  know  her  in  other  days,  had  kept  this 
query  in  mind.  Mrs.  Jones  still  has  her  periods 
of  absenj^naindedness,  her  mental  processes  are 
still  slow,  but  she  has  made  gains  in  home  man- 
agement, in  control  of  the  children,  and  in  gen- 
eral cheerfulness.  The  neighbors  who  used  to  be 
so  pessimistic  about  the  future  of  the  Joneses 
have  remarked  upon  these  changes.  The  mem- 
bers of  the  family  have  all  gained  more  affection 
for  the  home  and  for  one  another.  Their  renewal 
of  contact  with  the  world  outside  the  home  circle 
has  contributed  to  this  result.  But  a  great  deal 
still  remains  to  be  done.  The  need  of  the  oldest 
girl  for  better  outside  interests  has  not  been  sat- 
isfactorily met,  and  the  next  to  the  youngest,  who 
had  the  tonsil  operation,  must  have  more  spe- 
cialized attention  than  she  has  yet  received.  Mrs. 
79 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Jones  can  now  be  described  as  a  good  mother  but 
not  as  a  thoroughly  competent  one — perhaps  she 
may  never  become  so.  As  time  has  gone  on,  the 
social  worker  has  come  to  feel  that  the  lacks  of 
her  client  are  many  of  them  accounted  for  by  the 
accumulating  discouragements  of  years  of  neglect 
and  misunderstanding;  in  the  earlier  history,  as 
it  has  gradually  been  revealed,  is  contained  the 
key.  The  only  remedy  for  the  results  of  dis- 
couragement is  encouragement — encouragement 
given  with  how  patient  a  hand  and  how  discern- 
ing  an  eye. 

LUCIA  ALLEGRI  AND  HER  RELATIVES 

Unlike  the  other  clients  of  social  agencies 
whose  circumstances  are  described  in  this  and 
the  preceding  chapter,  Mrs.  Lucia  Allegri,  a 
Sicilian,  has  been  known  for  less  than  a  year  to 
the  social  worker  now  interested  in  her.  It  is  not 
my  purpose,  therefore,  to  tell  more  of  her  story 
than  is  necessary  to  explain  one  episode  in  it 
which  will  serve  to  illustrate  the  group,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  individual,  character  of  some 
forms  of  social  case  treatment.  I  shall  have  occa- 
80 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

sion  to  return  to  the  subject  of  group  treatment 
in  a  later  chapter.* 

Mrs.  Allegri's  husband  had  earned  good  wages 
before  his  death  nine  years  ago  at  his  home  in  an 
American  city  situated  on  the  border  of  one  of  the 
Great  Lakes.  The  ease  and  comfort  in  which  his 
wife  had  lived  was  believed  by  a  friend  of  the 
family  to  have  been  demonstrated  when  she  ex- 
plained that,  during  Allegri's  lifetime,  Mrs.  Alle- 
gri  had  had  her  own  hairdresser.  By  contrast, 
the  visitor  from  the  family  welfare  society  found 
her  in  damp,  dark  quarters  with  no  food  and 
little  fire;  she  had  to  communicate  with  her 
through  the  only  child  living  at  home,  for  Mrs. 
Allegri  spoke  no  English. 

As  this  client's  story,  with  the  help  of  visits  to 
her  married  son,  to  his  wife's  people,  and  to  an 
occasional  reference  elsewhere,  was  developed  by 
the  social  case  worker  it  became  two  conflicting 
stories. 

The  first  version  was  as  follows:   All  of  Mrs. 
Allegri's  children  had  died  early  but  three — a  son, 
Paolo,  who  had  aided  his  mother  in  every  way 
*  See  pages  138  to  143. 
6  81 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

possible  but  who  now  had  a  wife  and  three  chil- 
dren to  care  for;  a  daughter,  Antonina,  who  had 
behaved  most  undutifully,  and  not  many  months 
before  had  suddenly  left  her  excellent  position  as 
forewoman  in  a  lace  factory  to  marry  and  estab- 
lish a  home  in  a  nearby  town ;  and  Teresa,  aged 
eleven.  Antonina  was  reported  to  show  little 
interest  now  in  her  mother  and  young  sister — in 
fact,  none  of  the  relatives  knew  her  address. 

The  second  version,  developed  a  little  later 
from  sources  outside  the  family,  was  that  Mrs. 
Allegri  had  four  grown  children  instead  of  two; 
that  Paolo,  no  matter  what  his  earnings  or  his  re- 
sponsibilities, had  never  at  any  time  spent  his 
money  upon  his  own  people;  and  that  Antonina, 
far  from  shirking,  had  really  been  the  mainstay 
of  the  home  from  her  thirteenth  birthday  until 
very  recently,  when,  to  force  two  married  broth- 
ers and  a  married  sister  to  come  forward,  she  had 
stopped  helping  regularly  at  the  time  of  her  mar- 
riage, though  still  visiting  her  mother  every 
month.  The  older  married  daughter  was  said  to 
live  in  another  nearby  town. 

Several  visits  up  the  lake  to  addresses  given  by 
82 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

different  relatives  for  Antonina  yielded  no  trace 
of  her.  Meanwhile,  there  could  be  no  doubt  that 
Mrs.  Allegri  needed  continued  help,  and  that  her 
ignorance  of  American  ways  and  of  life  as  lived  in 
a  large  city  was  a  standing  temptation  to  her 
alert,  pleasure-loving,  street-gadding  youngest 
daughter  Teresa.  The  child  was  found  to  be  ab- 
sent from  school  nearly  half  the  time  and  to  be 
going  with  undesirable  companions.  No  matter 
who  should  or  should  not  shoulder  the  financial 
burden,  the  present  home  surroundings  were  bad 
for  the  mother's  rheumatism  and  worse  for  the 
child's  morals.  The  only  material  assistance 
given,  therefore,  was  temporary  relief,  pending 
agreement  upon  some  better  arrangement  of  the 
family  affairs. 

There  came  some  confirmation  of  story  number 
two  when  an  older  married  daughter,  Carmela, 
and  her  husband  were  actually  found  in  a  neigh- 
boring town.  Carmela's  husband  was  not  pros- 
perous, but  he  became  very  much  interested  in 
the  social  worker's  description  of  his  mother-in- 
law's  situation  and  undertook  to  act  upon  a  sug- 
gestion made  by  the  worker  that  he  call  a  family 
83 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

council  at  his  own  home  upon  the  first  conveni- 
ent holiday,  at  which  all  could  strive  to  clear  up 
the  many  conflicting  accounts  and  agree  upon 
some  plan  for  their  mother  and  Teresa. 

The  concreteness  of  this  idea  must  have  ap- 
pealed to  the  Allegri  clan,  for  when  the  day 
arrived  and  the  family  was  assembled,  all  were 
found  to  be  there  save  the  oldest  son,  who  was 
unknown  to  the  social  worker  and  who  had  been 
described  by  his  relatives  as  a  vagabond.  An- 
tonina  was  there  and  her  husband  and  one  or  two 
other  "in-laws,"  but  the  social  worker  was  the 
only  outsider  invited.  To  mark  the  importance 
of  the  occasion,  the  place  had  been  scrubbed  as 
for  a  festival  and  supper  was  served. 

Mrs.  Allegri  was  the  first  to  arrive.  Her  own 
share  in  the  proceedings  was  to  sit  back  in  the 
best  chair,  to  object  to  every  plan  proposed  by 
her  family,  and  to  rock  violently  throughout. 
Antonina,  it  was  generally  agreed,  had  done  her 
share  and  more  always,  but  she  expressed  herself 
as  ready  to  bear  half  the  expense  of  whatever 
plan  was  agreed  upon.  As  the  talk  continued 
and  every  one  had  his  full  say,  it  seemed  evident 

84 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  IN  BEING 

that  she  and  her  husband,  and  Carmela,  their 
hostess,  and  her  husband  were  the  responsible 
members  of  the  group.  It  also  developed  that  for 
Mrs.  Allegri  to  continue  to  live  alone  with  her 
youngest  daughter  was  impossible;  that,  as  the 
mother  grew  more  infirm,  she  would  need  the 
affectionate  care  of  an  adult  member  of  her 
family;  and  that  Teresa  should  now  be  super- 
vised by  the  most  Americanized  of  her  relatives — 
by  the  one,  that  is,  who  could  take  the  most  in- 
telligent interest  in  her  schooling,  her  church  re- 
lations, and  her  recreation.  Mrs.  Allegri 's  objec- 
tions had  to  be  considered  and  met,  of  course, 
though  usually  the  obstacles  that  seemed  to  her 
insurmountable  were  trifles.  At  last  it  was  ar- 
ranged that  she  was  to  live  with  Carmela,  the  one 
of  all  her  children  in  closest  sympathy  with  her, 
and  that  Teresa  was  to  go  to  Antonina's  Amer- 
ican home  with  its  more  modern  appointments 
and  smarter  ways. 

Unfortunately,  this  arrangement  let  the  two 
sons  off  in  a  way  that  it  should  not,  but  the  older 
one,  who  had  not  appeared  at  the  conference,  had 
always  failed  utterly,  and  Paolo  had  left  the 

85 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

family  meeting  in  anger  after  the  truth  about  his 
backslidings  came  out.  It  was  his  wife's  sister, 
in  fact,  who  had  brought  Mrs.  Allegri's  needs  to 
the  attention  of  the  family  welfare  society  in  the 
first  place,  and  had  urged  the  society  to  assume 
the  full  burden  of  support. 

This  same  branch  of  the  family  had  suppressed 
the  fact  of  the  existence  of  the  two  other  married 
children,  had  concealed  Antonina's  whereabouts, 
and  had  induced  Mrs.  Allegri  to  confirm  their 
various  misstatements. 

The  r61e  of  the  social  worker  at  the  conference 
had  been,  for  the  most  part,  that  of  a  listener  and 
observer.  Toward  the  end,  however,  she  had 
tried  to  bring  the  discussion  to  a  head  by  point- 
ing out  the  many  things  upon  which  all  were 
agreed.  The  story  does  not  end  here;  there 
have  been  various  ups  and  downs  since,  but  with 
the  introduction  of  group  thinking  into  Allegri 
affairs,  they  took  a  long  step  forward. 


86 


IV 
SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

^T^HE  tentative  definition  of  social  case  work 
*  which  I  am  about  to  attempt  will  have  no 
safer  basis  than  my  personal  experience  supple- 
mented by  a  habit  of  reading  many  social  case 
histories.  It  would  have  been  better,  of  course, 
to  deduce  a  definition  from  a  large  number  of 
cited  instances,  though  such  an  elaborate  back- 
ground could  still  have  been  challenged ;  proof  of 
its  representative  character  would  have  been 
necessary. 

For  this  merely  introductory  description  of 
case  work,  however,  I  have  adopted  the  policy  of 
exclusion,  rejecting  first  of  all  and  without  ques- 
tion all  those  aimless  dosings  of  social  ills  by  inex- 
perienced practitioners  which  are  called  social 
case  work  but  have  no  relation  to  its  theory  or  its 
practice.*   And  for  the  present,  at  least,  all  short- 

*  To  the  social  case  worker  who  chafes  under  the  task  of 
protecting  his  profession  from  the  indignities  it  now  suffers 
at  the  hands  of  the  inexpert  and  the  self-seeking,  there  may 

87 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

term  services  to  individuals  are  excluded,  such  as 
tiding  them  over  a  temporary  period;  of  stress, 
helping  them  to  find  some  agency  or  some  pro- 
fessional skill  which  they  know  they  need,  giving 
them  advice  upon  a  question  which  puzzles  them, 
and  so  on.  All  of  these  services  have  social  value, 
of  course,  but,  without  more  follow-up  work  and 
more  detailed  knowledge  of  their  clients  than 
case  workers  engaged  in  this  type  of  work  usually 
have,  the  permanent  values  cannot  well  be  meas- 
ured. I  am  reserving  for  consideration  in  a  later 
chapter*  those  supplementary  forms  of  case 
work  which  are  now  being  utilized  as  adjuncts  to 
the  skill  of  other  professions ;  supplementary,  for 
instance,  to  medical  service  in  hospitals  and  dis- 
pensaries, to  mental  examinations  and  treat- 
ments in  psychiatric  clinics,  and  to  class  room 
teaching  in  the  elementary  schools.    Some  medi- 

be  some  consolation  in  the  thought  that  practitioners  of 
other  professions  have  shared  the  experience.  Not  so  many 
years  ago  a  medical  degree  could  still  be  bought  in  these 
United  States;  and  well  into  the  nineteenth  century  many 
of  our  states  relied  upon  judges  without  legal  '  •"  " •'  " 

the  chief  justice  of  Rhode  Island  was  a  fan;  » 

*  See  Chapter  IX. 

88 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

cal  social  work  of  this  adjunct  type  is  quite  as 
intensive  .  tS  could  be  wished,  but  to  the  extent 
that  many  of  its  details  are  modified  by  medical 
requirements,  it  becomes  difficult  to  generalize 
about  it  as  social  case  work  only,  just  as  there 
would  be  difficulties  in  illustrating  psychiatry  in 
general  by  the  work  of  a  psychiatrist  who  was 
an  officer  of  a  court,  and  therefore  dealt  with  a 
selected  group  under  court  supervision  and  statu- 
tory control.  In  addition  to  avoiding,  for  pur- 
poses of  definition,  the  social  work  which  is  sub- 
sidiary, it  has  been  equally  important  to  avoid 
work  which  is  restricted,  by  an  arbitrary  set  of 
rules  or  by  the  nature  of  its  support,  to  certain 
ways  of  proceeding.  Neither  "the  dead  hand" 
nor  the  whims  of  living  donors  nor  the  restric- 
tions put  upon  some  public  expenditures  should 
be  allowed  to  cripple  professional  discovery  and 
development. 

It  follows  that  this  stage  in  my  description  is 
limited  to  skilled  service  in  the  first  place,  to 
long-term,  intensive  care  of  difficult  cases  in  the 
second  place,  and  to  service  rendered  under  rela- 
tively^ unhampered,  independent  auspices  in  the 

89 


WHAT  IS  SOGIAX  CASE  WORK? 

third  place.  Concentration  upon  this  group 
should  bring  to  light  considerations  of  value  to 
social  treatment  in  general,  for  it  is  treatment  of 
the  intensive  and  long-continuing  type  which 
provides  us  with  criticism  of  all  our  processes — 
with  the  most  searching  criticism,  in  fact,  that  we 
now  have.  It  is  easy  to  be  pleased  with  the  re- 
sults of  social  service  when  we  measure  them  just 
after  the  first  changes  for  the  better,  or  when  we 
see  them  from  one  angle  and  no  more.  But  when 
we  dare  to  examine  them  from  the  point  of  view 
of  life  as  a  whole,  with  the  permanent  welfare  of 
the  individual  and  of  society  in  mind ,  we  are  ap- 
plying a  much  severer  test  of  values. 

Let  me,  with  such  a  test  in  mind,  make  the 
broadest  generalization  about  social  case  work 
that  I  can.  !  Its  theories,  its  aims,  its  best  intensive 
practice  all  seem  to  have  been  converging  of  late 
years  toward  one  central  idea;  namely,  toward 
the  development  of  personality,  What  does  this 
term  imply  when  the  social  worker  uses  it? 

A  Scotch  metaphysician  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury wrote,  "When  a  man  loses  his  estate,  his 
health,  his  strength,  he  is  still  the  same  person 
90 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

and  has  lost  nothing  of  his  personality."  Few 
social  workers  would  agree  with  the  italicized 
portion  of  this  sentence.  Loss  of  social  status  and 
health,  if  at  the  same  time  it  revealed  untapped 
resources  within  and  without,  might  possibly 
develop  a  man's  personality,  but  could  hardly 
leave  it  unchanged.  In  fact,  such  losses  cripple 
personality  far  more  often  than  they  strengthen 
it.  If  for  personality  Thomas  Reid  had  substi- 
tuted individuality,  few  would  differ  from  him. 
Without  attempting  any  close  analysis  of  the 
many  varied  and  technical  uses  of  these  two 
words  by  biologists,  psychologists,  and  others, 
there  is  a  serviceable  distinction  between  them 
which  has  long  been  recognized  and  one  which 
ought  not  to  be  lost  sight  of/  If  we  accept  that 
definition  of  individuality  which  limits  it  to  "the 
uniqueness  of  a  living  being,  or  its  difference  from 
others  of  its  kind  and  from  the  rest  oKnature,"*  1 

*  Century  Dictionary.  In  the  sentences  immediately 
following  I  may  seem  to  overemphasize  the  width  of  the 
separation  in  meaning  between  "individuality"  and  "per- 
sonality" by  holding  the  use  of  the  former  to  very  narrow 
limits.  It  did  not  seem  wise,  however,  in  so  non-technical  a 
discussion  to  introduce  the  third  word  "temperament," 

91 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

then  personality  is  the  far  more  inclusive  term, 
for  it  signifies  not  only  all  that  is  native  and  in- 
dividual to  a  man  but  all  that  comes  to  him  by 
way  of  education,  experience,  and  human  inter- 
course. Our  physical  heredity,  our  innate  quali- 
ties transmitted  and  unalterable  are  individual, 
but  all  that  portion  of  our  social  heritage  and  our 
environment  which  we  have  been  able  in  day  by 
day  living  to  add  to  individuality  and  make  a 
part  of  ourselves  is  personal ;  and  the  whole  be- 
comes our  personality. 

In  other  words,  it  is  our  personality  which  re- 
lates us  closely  to  our  human  kind ;  not  only  to 
the  socius  our  brother,  but  to  all  the  communities 
and  institutions  he  has  developed.  There  is  no 
conflict  between  the  idea  of  individual  differ- 
ences, about  which  I  shall  have  something  to  say 
later,  and  this  complementary  idea  of  relatedness. 
Difference  is  as  characteristic  of  personality  as  of 
the  tone  colors  in  an  orchestra,  but  the  differ- 
ences between  personalities,  no  two  of  which  are 
alike,  also  resemble  those  of  orchestral  instru- 

now  often  used  by  psychologists  for  innate  make-up,  but 
having  a  different  connotation  for  the  general  reader. 

92 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

ments  in  that  they  are  attuned  and  related  dif- 
ferences.   While  a  man's  individuality-does  not 

change,  his  pprsnnfljjry,  which  inr1uck>s-hnth  his 

native  and  acquired^ualitievis-forever  chang- 
ing. If  it  does  not  expand  and  grow  from  day  to 
day  by  full  exercise  of  function,  it  contracts  and 
even  atrophies. 

When,  therefore,  preparatory  to  attempting  to 
define  social  case  work,  I  speak  of  the  develop- 
ment of  personality,  I  am  using  a  descriptive 
phrase  which  has  been  assumed  to  belong  espe- 
cially, in  turn,  to  teaching,  reapplied  psychology, 
and  to  religion.*    There  can  be  no  quarrel  with 

*  My  own  approach  to  the  subject  has  been  by  the  way 
of  social  science  rather  than  pedagogy  or  psychology  or 
theology.  Though  I  shall  have  to  return  again  to  this  cen- 
tral theme  of  my  discussion,  it  may  be  well  to  reproduce  at 
this  point  a  few  brief  passages  written  in  quite  different 
connections  and  each  shedding  some  light  on  the  use  of  the 
word  personality  from  their  various  points  of  view. 

Criticism. — ■"  If  the  revelation  of  personality  unites  men, 
the  stress  upon  mere  individuality  separates  them,  and 
there  are  countless  poets  of  the  day  who  glory  in  their 
eccentric  individualism  without  remembering  that  it  is  only 
through  a  richly  developed  personality  that  poetry  gains 
any  universal  values." — Bliss  Perry,  A  Study  of  Poetry,  p. 
342. 

Religion. — "What     ...     is  our  statement  of  human 

93 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

the  claims  of  any  of  these,  for  professionally  con- 
sidered all  are  forms  of  teaching.  Social  case 
work  is  only  one  more  form,  though  it  has  a  his- 
tory and  a  method  of  its  own,  and  an  approach 
which  differs  from  that  of  these  other  forms.    In 

personality?  It  is  no  several  or  separate  thing.  Its  essentia 
cannot  be  found  in  terms  of  distinctness.  It  does  not, 
ideally  or  practically,  signify  a  new,  independent,  cen- 
trality  of  being.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  altogether  dependent 
and  relative.  It  is  not  first  self-realized  in  distinctness, 
that  it  may  afterward,  for  additional  perfection  of  enjoy- 
ment, be  brought  into  relations.  In  relation  and  depen- 
dence lies  its  very  essentia." — R.  C.  Moberly,  D.D., 
Atonement  and  Personality,  p.  253. 

Psychology. — -"Our  personality  is  thus  the  result  of  what 
we  start  with  and  what  we  have  lived  through.  It  is  the 
'reaction  mass'  as  a  whole." — J.  B.  Watson,  Psychology 
from  the  Standpoint  of  a  Behaviorist,  p.  420. 

11  Man's  self  or  personality  is  the  sum  total  of  his  specific 
experiences  in  so  far  as  they  represent  the  results  of  organ- 
ization. Each  new  experience  modifies  our  personality. 
It  is  not  merely  an  accretion  to  the  sum  of  our  mental  data, 
but  it  alters  our  attitude  toward  the  external  world  and 
makes  a  permanent  impression,  small  or  great,  upon  our 
general  character." — Howard  C.  Warren,  Human  Psy- 
chology, p.  384. 

Pedagogy. — "The  unfolding  of  personality  is  due  both 
to  inner  tendency  and  to  outer  influence  and  agency.  In 
part  the  work  of  nature,  it  is  in  part  also  the  work  of  edu- 
cation and  of  experience.  ...  So  far,  then,  the  two 
vital  considerations  both  for  the  philosopher  and  for  the 

94 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

the  illustration  given  in  my  Introduction,  Miss 
Sullivan  is  a  professional  teacher,  but  one  who 
took  her  pupil  out  of  the  classroom  into  the  com- 
munity and  into  the  world.  Her  habitual  use  of 
social  contacts  as  a  means  of  developing  the  per- 

educator  are  the  inner  potency  and  tendency  of  the  individ- 
ual and  the  nature  and  effect  of  environing  reality." — 
Thistleton  Mark,  The  Unfolding  of  Personality  as  the 
Chief  Aim  in  Education,  pp.  n  and  22. 

Biology. — "Of  the  actual  foreignness  or  imperfection  in 
the  environment  biology  as  such  can  give  no  account. 
.  .  .  We  seem  unable,  from  the  purely  biological  stand- 
point, to  give  any  account  of  progressive  evolution  except 
as  the  outcome  of  a  blind  struggle  for  existence.  But  for 
conscious  personality  the  struggle  is  no  longer  blind:  the 
future  is  foreseen  and  fore-ordained  if  only  to  a  limited 
extent;  and  the  past  is  remembered  and  acted  on.  This  is 
not  only  so  for  individual  persons  but  the  traditions  and 
ideals  of  a  race  represent  its  memory  and  foresight.  From 
the  standpoint  of  personality  evolution  takes  on  a  new- 
aspect,  and  is  no  longer  a  blind  process." — J.  S.  Haldane, 
Mechanism,  Life  and  Personality,  pp.  103  and  131. 

Social  Science. — '"Sociality  and  individuality  are  the 
two  aspects  of  the  one  reality,  which  is  personality.  Per- 
sonality is  the  final  value,  the  only  thing  in  the  world  worth 
having  in  itself.  We  do  not  of  course  mean  that  every  kind 
of  personality  is  good  in  itself,  rather  that  nothing  but 
personality  can  be  good  in  itself.  A  society  is  best  ordered 
when  it  best  promotes  the  personality  of  its  members." — 
R.  M.  Maciver,  The  Elements  of  Social  Science,  p.  153. 

95 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

sonality  of  Helen  Keller  obliterates,  I  confess, 
all  distinction  between  the  social  worker  and  the 
teacher. 

But  what  special  approach,  what  means  con- 
sciously utilized  distinguishes  the  service  des- 
cribed in  my  second  and  third  chapters  from 
that  of  the  instructor  in  the  class  room?  Were 
those  who  effected  better  adjustments  for  Maria 
Bielowski  and  George  Foster*  called  social 
workers  because  they  happened  to  be  teaching 
Maria  and  George  and  adjusting  them  to  life 
from  a  center  which  was  called  a  social  agency 
instead  of  a  school?  Or  were  they  called  social 
workers  because  Maria  was  at  onetime  delinquent 
and  George  at  one  time  dependent?  Neither 
"delinquent"  nor  "dependent"  describes  these 
young  people  in  social  terms.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  so-called  dependent,  defective,  and  de- 
linquent classes  are  not  social  classes,  for  the 
reason  that  there  is  within  these  separate  groups 
no  power  of  cohesion.  Moreover,  the  specialized 
skill  of  the  social  case  worker  will  be  found  to  be, 
in  its  essentials,  just  as  applicable  to  the  rest  of 
*  See  Chapter  II. 

96 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

the  world  as  to  those  who  could  be  thus  labelled. 
Without  minimizing  for  a  moment  the  impor- 
tance of  such  questions  of  temporary  relief,  per- 
manent support,  sources  of  support  as  enter  into 
the  treatment  of  dependency;  without  ignoring 
such  details  of  court  and  reformatory  manage- 
ment as  are  related  to  the  care  of  delinquents, 
I  cannot  agree  that  any  of  these  considerations,; 
relating  to  what  might  be  called  the  machinery 
of  different  types  of  social  work,  are  central  to 
the  task  of  the  social  case  worker.  Analysis  will 
show  that  they  fall  into  second  place  when  prob- 
lems of  social  relationship  and  of  personality 
thrust  themselves  forward,  as  they  so  persist- 
ently do. 

It  is  true  that  social  case  work  has  dealt  and 
will  continue  to  deal  with  questions  of  restora- 
tion to  self-support,  with  matters  of  health  and 
personal  hygiene,  as  well  as  with  the  intricacies 
of  mental  hygiene,  and  that  each  of  these  things 
has  a  direct  relation  to  personality.  But,  in  so 
far  as  each  is  a  specialty  (some  are  specialties  de- 
manding quite  other  forms  of  professional  skill) , 
social  case  work  will  be  found  to  be  coterminous 
7  97 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

with  none  of  them,  but  to  have,  in  addition  to  its 
supplementary  value  in  these  other  tasks,  a  field 
all  its  own.    That  field  is  the  development  of  per- 

/  sonality  through  the  conscious  and  comprehen- 
sive adjustment  of  social  relationships,  and 
within  that  field  the  worker  is  no  more  occupied 
with  abnormalities  in  the  individual  than  in  the 
environment,  is  no  more  able  to  neglect  the  one 
than  the  other.    The  distinctive  approach^!  the 

T  case  worker,  in  fact,  is  back  to  the  individual  by 
wayof  his  social  environ  mentTanr>  wWpv^Tazl^ 

justment  must  be  effected  in  thia-manner,  jji- 

dividual  by  individual,  instead  nf  in  the^  mass.  7 
there  some  form  of  social  case  work  is  and  will 
continue  to  be  needed.  So  long  as  human 
beings  are  human  and  their  environment  is  the 
world,  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  state  of  affairs 
in  which  both  they  and  the  world  they  live  in  will 
be  in  no  need  of  these  adjustments  and  readjust- 
ments of  a  detailed  sort. 

To  state  this  in  a  more  formal  way  is  to  arrive 
at  my  tentative  definition : 

Social  case   work   consists   of  those   processes 
which  develop  personality  through  adjustments  con- 

98 


A  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

\sciously  effected,  individual  by  individual,  between 
men  and  their  social  environment. 

What  do  we  mean  by  "social  environment"? 
The  dictionary  defines  environment  as  "the  ag- 
gregate of  surrounding  things  and  conditions,"* 
but  when  we  put  "social"  in  front  of  it,  it  be- 
comes evident  at  once  that  many  persons  and 
things  have  been  excluded  and  many  substitutes 
included ;  the  environment  ceases  to  be  environ- 
ment in  space  merely — it  widens  to  the  horizon  of 
man's  thought,  to  the  boundaries  of  his  capacity 
for  maintaining  relationships,  and  it  narrows  to 
the  exclusion  of  all.  tjiose  things  which  have 
no  re_aj_  influence  upon  hfe  emotional,  mental, 
and  spiritual  life.  A  physical  environment  fre- 
quently has  its  social  aspects ;  to  the  extent  that 
it  has  these  it  becomes  a. part  of  the  social  en- 
vironment, y/ 

Turning  back  to  the  six  examples  here  given  of. 
professional  case  work  and  comparing  them  with 
my  definition,  do  they  bear  it  out?  Do  they  re- 
veal a  genuine  growth  in  personality  which  has 
been  achieved  through  strengthened  and  better 
*  Century  Dictionary. 
99 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

adjusted  social  relations?    In  varying  degrees,  it 
seems  to  me  that  they  do. 

Henry  James  has  remarked,  in  one  of  his  dis- 
cussions of  literary  craftsmanship,  that  relations 
stop  nowhere,  and  that  the  problem  of  the  artist 
is  to  draw,  "by  a  geometry  of  his  own  the  circle 
within  which  they  shall  happily  appear  to  do 
so."*  The  relationships  of  each  one  of  the 
clients  of  social  agencies  who  are  described  in  my 
illustrations  extend  far  beyond  any  social  work- 
er's ken.  And,  within  that  ken,  those  responsi- 
ble for  planning  have  had  to  make  their  perilous 
choices,  have  had  to  decide  what  to  strive  to 
understand  and  utilize,  what  wholly  to  neglect. 
Will  it  not  be  found,  however,  that  a  marked  ad- 
vance in  personality  has  been  achieved  in  three 
of  the  cases,  that  in  two  others  good  progress  has 
been  made,  and  that  in  another — the  last  one 
cited — a  better  adjustment  has  probably  been 
effected  ? 

But  some  may  question  whether  these  results 
were  achieved  by  a  specialized  form  of  skill,  con- 
tending that,  while  the  service  had  its  value,  it 
*  Preface  to  Roderick  Hudson,  New  York  edition. 
IOO 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFlK 

involved  the  exercise  of  no  new  technical  knowl- 
edge mastered  with  difficulty  and  pursued  there- 
after with  increasing  expertness,  that  any  intel- 
ligent person,  without  previous  training  but  with 
tact  and  goodwill,  could  have  done  the  same 
things.  It  may  be  well,  therefore,  to  examine 
what  processes  and  what  types  of  skill  were  ac- 
tually involved  in  these  social  treatments. 

Before  writing  this  page  I  tried  the  experiment 
of  listing  each  act  and  policy  of  each  social  case 
worker  responsible,  in  the  six  cases  cited,  for  the 
treatment  described.  This  gave  me  six  long  lists 
of  items,  many  of  which  were  duplicates.  By 
combining  the  duplicates  and  trying  to  classify 
the  items,  I  found  that  they  fell  under  the  two 
general  heads  of  "insights"  and  "acts."  Each  of 
these  two  divided  once  again — insights  to  include 
"an  understanding  of  individuality"  and  "an  un- 
derstanding of  environment";  acts  to  include 
"direct  action  upon  the  mind"  and  "indirect 
action  upon  the  mind."  Thus,  rephrased,  my  jj 
four  divisions  were: 

A.  Insight  into  individuality  and  personal 
characteristics 

IOI 


WHAT  1$  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

B.  Insight  into  the  resources,  dangers,  and 
influence  of  the  social  environment 

C.  Direct  action  of  mind  upon  mind 

D.  Indirect  action  through  the  social  envi- 
ronment 

As  I  examined  the  items  of  each  list  of  particu- 
lars carefully,  it  seemed  to  me  that  each  item 
might  possibly  have  been  thought  of  and  carried 
out  by  a  non-specialist.  But  trained  skill  was 
shown  in  the  combination  of *these.  itemized  acts, 
which  no  untrained  person,  howeVer  intelligent, 
would  have  achieved.  The  writer  who  strives  to 
be  an  artist  in  his  profession  and  the  social  case 
worker  with  similar  ambitions  have  at  least  this 
in  common — that  each  is  dealing  with  a  material 
which  happens  to  be  part  of  the.  warp  and  woof 
of  everyday  life.  The  one  is  an  artificer  in  words, 
the  other  in  social  relations.  The  one  must  con- 
trive to  give  a  new  stamp  to  counters  worn 
smooth  by  our  common  speech ;  the  other  must 
be  able  to  discover  new  meanings  and  possibilities 
in  those  familiar  situations  in  which  all  are 
sharers,  must  find  new  stimuli  in  and  for  minds 
worn  dull  by  habit  or  circumstance.  It  takes 
102 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

something  more  than  a  casual  examination  to 
bring  to  light  in  either  literature  or  case  work  the 
originality  of  the  new  combinations  effected,  to 
realize  the  study  and  drill,  the  self-expression  and 
self-effacement  which  lie  behind  the  achieved 
result. 

This  handicap  of  the  familiar  must  be  kept 
in  mind  and  allowed  for  in  the  analysis  which 
follows,  of  some  of  the  case  work  processes 
found  in  the  six  examples  already  given.  The 
items  are  arranged  under  the  four  heads  just 
named,  and  I  purposely  omit  all  details  of 
method. 

A.  B. — The  two  types  of  insight  shown — into 
individuality  and  into  social  environment — 
should  be  considered  together,  for  it  is  only  when- 
these  "are  combined  that  the  personality  is  re- 
vealed. If  the  development  of  personality  is  our 
task,  then  t{ie  personality  as  it  now  is,  together 
with  the  wa^s  in  which  it  came  to  be  what  it  now 
is,  must  be  discovered.  The  technical  side  of 
these  diagnostic  processes,  in  so  far  as  they  are 
social  work  processes  and  do  not  involve  the 
technique  of  other  specialties,  I  have  discussed 
103 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

quite  fully  in  another  book.  This  side  of  the  sub- 
ject does  not  concern  us  here.  But  it  should  be 
understood  that  to  acquire  skill  in  social  diag- 
nosis takes  time,  though  when  once  acquired 
time  is  saved.  Failure  to  learn  earlier  the  social 
history  behind  Winifred  Jones's  folded  hands, 
vacant-minded  ways,  and  neglected  home  was 
a  failure  in  social  diagnosis,  with  the  mistake 
strengthened  by  the  mental  diagnosis,  though 
possibly  there  was  a  vicious  circle  here  and  the 
decision  of  the  mental  examiner  was  shaped  in 
part  by  the  imperfect  picture  given  him  of  social 
conditions.  Only  slowly  was  a  clearer  picture 
obtained,  but  the  new  social  worker  put  in  charge 
of  the  case  about  this  time  had  the  good  sense  to 
suspend  judgment  until  she  had  more  facts.* 

*  See  Chapter  III,  pp.  72  and  80. 

Addressing  the  family  welfare  workers  at  the  Milwau- 
kee National  Conference  of  Social  Work  (Proceedings  for 
1921),  Dr.  Wm.  Healy  told  them  that,  "Valuable  though 
tests  properly  administered  and  interpreted  unquestion- 
ably are,  still  one  of  the  best  ways  to  evaluate  an  adult's 
capacities  is  to  get  knowledge  of  him  as  he  has  been  ob- 
served in  his  home,  at  his  work,  in  his  human  relationships. 
One  should  always  consider  character  tendencies  or  per- 
sonality trends.     It  is  very  important  to  think  of  people 

I04 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

The  question  of  whether  Maria  Bielowski's  re- 
pellent aspect  and  her  thieving  were  due  to  causes 
that  were  innate  and  individual  or  to  unfavorable 
environment  came  to  the  fore  immediately.* 
There  are  few  harder  social  questions  to  answer 
than  this  one.f  The  answer  was  arrived  at,  as  it 
will  always  have  to  be  in  similar  cases,  with  the 

from  the  standpoint  of  truthfulness,  affection,  sympathy, 
cleanliness,  promptness,  responsibility,  stability,  etc. 
Familiarize  yourselves  with  all  of  these  and  remember 
that  personality  trends  and  also  frequently  habits  estab- 
lished  by  gpciajflgaiiling  have  more  to  do  witn the  success 
and  failure* of  adults  than  anything  else.  They  often 
have  much  more  to  do  with  one's  ability  to  support  and 
bring  up  children  and  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  world 
in  general  than  what  is  learned  from  the  bare  results  of 
mental  tests." 

*  See  Chapter  II,  p.  32  sq. 

t  Dr.  Bronner,  speaking  of  mental  equipment  at  the  New 
Orleans  National  Conference  of  Social  Work  (Proceedings 
for  1920,  p.  357),  said:  "Practically  it  is  often  difficult  to 
determine  what  is  innate  personality  make-up  and  what  is 
the  result  of  environment  and  experience.  The  interplay 
of  the  two  is  great  and  the  innate  make-up  can  scarcely  be 
extricated  from  the  product  of  circumstances.  Perhaps 
from  one  point  of  view  such  separation  is  not  needed  or 
desirable,  and  yet  for  the  offering  of  prognoses  it  is  some- 
times essential  to  know  just  what  the  individual  is  in- 
nately, and  what  he  might  be  like  under  different  circum- 
stances." 

105 


y 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

aid  of  medical  and  mental  experts;  but  part  of 
the  basis  of  decision  in  regard  to  what  to  do  with 
Maria  was  a  kind  of  knowledge  which  at  present 
the  social  case  worker  is  far  better  equipped  to 
gather  rapidly  and  accurately  than  the  practi- 
tioner in  any  other  profession.  The  analysis  of 
Maria's  home  situation,  of  her  work  and  school 
records,  the  discovery  of  the  small  private  school 
as  a  social  resource — these  were  things  that 
needed  to  be  done  not  in  leisurely  fashion  as  time 
permitted,  but  at  once,  for  upon  their  efficient 
doing  depended  the  decision  of  the  court.  The 
diagnostic  processes  did  not  end  here;  they  sel- 
dom end  before  treatment  is  at  an  end.  The 
probation  officer  was  a  social  case  worker  whose 
service  was  restricted  by  court  conditions,  so  she 
turned  the  task  of  long-continued  treatment  over 
to  another  case  worker  who  later  became  Maria's 
guardian.  This  guardian,  it  should  be  noted, 
was  always  using  her  combination  of  imaginative 
sympathy  and  technical  training  to  gain  deeper 
insights  into  Maria's  attitude  toward  life,  and 
into  the  possibilities  and  dangers  of  the  various 
environments  in  which  she  lived.  Insight  and 
1 06 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

action  interplay  in  this  fashion  continually.  Thus 
the  Allegri  family  council,  called  at  the  suggestion 
of  the  social  worker,  was  not  only  a  means  of  dis- 
covering the  attitude  of  the  various  members  of 
the  family  toward  one  another  and  toward  the 
plight  of  mother  and  child ;  it  was  also  a  way  of 
arriving  at  a  solution  of  some  of  their  difficulties 
By  giving  Mrs.  Allegri  a  more  healthful  and  con- 
genial home  and  by  finding  better  oversight  for 
Teresa.  A  social  worker  can  be  quite  skilful  in 
discovering,  item  by  item,  the  facts  of  past  and 
present  social  environment  without  having  the 
insight  which  this  worker  showed  in  grasping, 
among  many  details,  the  core  of  the  difficulty. 
In  other  words,  it  is  possible  to  master  a  certain 
technique  without  having  had  originally,  and 
without  having  acquired,  that  constructive  imag- 
ination the  possession  of  which  makes  technique 
worthwhile. 

C. — The  treatment  items  classified  in  my  list 
under  direct  action  begin  with  those  services, 
often  of  the  humblest  sort,  which  tend  to 
strengthen  personal  relations  with  a  client.  When 
Miss  Sullivan  dispensed  with  a  nurse  for  little 
107 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Helen  Keller  and  cared  for  her  herself,  when 
Maria  Bielowski's  guardian  confessed  to  the  rent 
in  her  own  stocking,  when  A.  B.  walked  the 
streets  late  at  night  with  habit-ridden  Clara 
Vansca,  when  the  Youngjbaby  was  killed  and  the 
district  secretary  was  with  the  father  and  mother 
through  all  that  trying  time,  something  passed 
between  mind  and  mind  that  made  for  perm 
nence  of  relation  and  of  influence.  Closely  allie 
to  this  eagerness  to  be  of  service  are  frankness  of 
intercourse,  absence  of  officialism,  and  that  habit 
of  loyally  keeping  faith  which  is  emphasized  in 
several  of  the  accounts.  Patience  too — a  pa- 
tience born  of  sympathy,  of  trained  insight  and  of 
vision — contributed  much  to  the  personal  influ- 
ence gradually  acquired  by  these  case  workers. 
Examine  once  more  the  accounts  of  Clara 
Vansca,  of  Winifred  Jones,  and  of  Maria  Bielow- 
ski,  and  think  how  easily  everything  could  have 
been  lost  by  impatience  at  critical  moments. 
Note,  too,  how  re-education  of  habit  was 
achieved  partly  through  adjustments  in  the  en- 
vironment and  partly  through  the  direct  action 
of  mind  on  mind,  and  how  the  policy  of  encour- 
108 


er 
edjj 

ed^ 


\ 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

agement  stands  out  as  an  important  means  of 
re-education.  Sometimes  there  must  be  warning 
and  discipline  besides,  as  with  Helen  Keller  at  the 
very  beginning,  and  as  with  Clara  Vansca  when 
she  was  about  to  take  her  sixth  work  place.  But 
flexibility  was  shown  by  the  worker  who  knew 
Clara — flexibility  combined  with  no  small  degree 
of  persistence,  for  repetition  without  cessation  is 
the  only  way  in  which  to  make  an  impress  upon 
the  slow  type  of  mind. 

The  policy  of  all  others,  however,  which  is  val- 
uable in  developing  the  mind  and  social  relations 
of  a  client  is  the  policy  of  assuring  his  participa- 
tion in  plans  for  his  welfare.  I  shall  have  to  re-/ 
turn  to  this  later.  Maria  Bielowski's  trip  with 
her  guardian  to  the  music  teacher's  studio  illus- 
trates my  meaning.  I  ask  myself  how  I  should 
have  met  that  request  for  a  loan  of  #50  to  study 
voice  culture  by  mail.  Probably  I  should  have 
had  enough  presence  of  mind  to  avoid  exclaiming 
"Nonsense"  on  the  spot,  perhaps  have  thought 
of  offering  to  take  the  circular  of  the  correspon- 
dence school  to  an  expert  for  his  opinion  of  its 
merits.  But  what  the  guardian  did  was  so  much 
109 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

better.  Not  only  did  she  seek  expert  advice  to 
reinforce  her  unexpressed  opinion,  but  Maria  par- 
ticipated in  every  step  of  the  process  and  in  mak- 
ing the  decision.  Mrs.  Allegri  was  a  participator 
in  that  family  council  at  which  each  spoke  his 
mind ;  George  Foster  was  induced  to  participate 
in  the  new  adjustments  found  necessary  in  his 
last  free  home;  Mrs.  Rupert  Young  had  some- 
thing definite  to  do — to  control  her  sharp  tongue, 
that  is — as  a  part  of  plans  for  the  re-education  of 
her  husband.  Instances  multiply,  but  the  oppor- 
tunity to  use  this  resource  is  often  missed  by  the 
worker  who  is  so  eager  to  serve  that  she  is 
tempted  to  do  all  the  serving  and  all  the  deciding 
herself. 

D. — Indirect  action  through  many  different 
parts  of  the  social  environment — through  other 
persons,  through  institutions  and  agencies, 
through  material  things — though  not  the  only 
approach  of  the  social  case  worker,  is  more  ex- 
clusively within  his  field  than  are  some  of  the 
other  approaches  I  have  mentioned.  "The  visi- 
tor of  strong  personality,"  writes  Miss  Elizabeth 
Dutcher,  "who  relies  on  her  own  ability  to  influ- 

no 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

ence  her  subnormal  client  will  sooner  or  later  lose 
out;  some  way  or  other  the  co-operation  of  the 
client's  group  must  be  obtained  in  suggesting  the 
same  ideas  that  the  visitor  is  trying  to  put  over, 
or  the  individual  social  worker's  efforts  will  be  of 
no  permanent  value."*  This  warning  need  not 
be  confined  to  contacts  with  the  subnormal.  It 
is  a  recurring  temptation  of  the  man  or  woman 
with  a  strong  will  to  substitute  the  direct  ap- 
proach for  the  indirect.  But  if  social  workers  are 
justified  in  their  belief  that  by  its  very  nature 
personality  depends  in  considerable  part  upon 
healthy  action  and  reaction  between  the  totaF7 
social  environment  and  the  individual,  then  J 
many  of  life's  tragedies  can  be  traced  to  the  at- 
tempt to  make  some  one  social  relationship  serve 
for  all  the  others.  The  comprehensive,  many- 
sided  approach  through  the  social  environment 
is  peculiarly  well  adapted  to  the  end  which  social 
case  work  has  in  view,  and  it  is  not  exceptional 
to  find  the  case  worker  turning  for  guidance  or 

*  Paper  on  Possibilities  of  Home  Supervision  of  Moron 
Women,  p.  275,  in  Proceedings  of  National  Conference  of 
Social  Work  for  1921,  at  Milwaukee. 

Ill 


/ 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

co-operation,  as  in  the  particular  instances  given, 
to  physicians,  psychiatrists,  teachers,  clergymen, 
public  officials,  and  relatives,  and  utilizing  such 
agencies  as  social  settlements,  vocational  courses, 
parks  and  playgrounds,  summer  outings,  foster 
homes,  and  so  on. 

Quite  early  in  the  diagnosis  and  treatment  of 
the  clients  we  are  now  considering,  their  social 
workers  turned  to  hospitals  and  mental  clinics 
for  expert  service  on  their  behalf.  As  soon  as 
social  treatment  began,  such  services  were  needed 
for  Maria  Bielowski,  Rupert  Young,  and  Wini- 
fred Jones,  and  they  were  required  later  for 
George  Foster.  One  of  the  duties  of  the  social 
workers  interested  was  to  see  that  their  clients 
had  the  best  possible  advice  about  health  and 
that  they  took  full  advantage  of  it. 

Similarly,  the  schools  attended  by  the  children 
had  to  be  consulted  about  their  school  records, 
and  conferences  held  with  their  teachers,  that 
social  and  educational  services  might  be  dove- 
tailed. 

The  records  are  not  so  specific  with  regard  to 
church  attendance  and  religious  training;   there 

112 


4 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

does  not  appear,  that  is,  to  be  the  same  working 
out  of  a  joint  program,  though  Rupert  Young  and 
Clara  Vansca  were  urged  to  attend  their  own 
church,  and  Clara's  relations  with  it  were 
strengthened  both  by  her  stay  in  the  convent  and 
by  the  careful  oversight  of  her  social  worker.  It 
is  worth  noting,  in  passing,  that  the  Austrian 
Catholic  church  was  the  first  place  in  which  Clara 
and  her  relatives  were  once  more  able  to  meet  on 
equal  terms.  A  very  recent  entry  in  the  case 
history  of  Winifred  Jones  is  to  the  effect  that  a 
Methodist  minister  had  been  asked  by  the  case 
worker  to  call  upon  the  family  and  invite  the 
children  to  join  the  Sunday  school.  The  request 
had  been  made  with  the  knowledge  and  consent 
of  Mrs.  Jones,  who  was  a  Methodist  at  one  time, 
but  who  had  cut  herself  off  from  this  contact  as 
from  so  many  others. 

There  is  often  need  of  team  play  as  between 
two  or  more  social  agencies,  all  legitimately  in- 
terested in  various  members  of  the  same  family. 
An  officer  of  the  public  non-support  bureau  aided 
the  family  welfare  society  both  in  making  the 
first  tentative  plans  for  the  Rupert  Youngs  and 
8  113 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

in  putting  the  authority  of  the  law  behind  these 
plans.  Education  for  the  Vanscas  in  careful 
spending  was  promoted  by  the  dietitian,  the 
cooking  teacher,  and  the  sewing  teacher,  while 
the  savings  bank  became  an  aid  in  teaching 
them  to  save.  Teresa  Allegri  was  encouraged 
to  attend  a  club  at  a  neighboring  settlement 
house,  the  Jones  children  and  the  Vanscas  were 
given  outings  and  entertainments  in  plenty, 
and  Maria  Bielowski  had  a  good  vacation  every 
year. 

Case  workers  are  always  acting  as  go-betweens 
in  this  way;  always  seeking  to  make  intelligent 
use  of  those  organized  social  resources  of  neigh- 
borhood and  community  which,  together  with 
advances  in  the  science  of  health,  have  helped  to 
make  better  social  case  work  possible.  This  fact 
is  responsible  for  some  confusion  of  thought,  and 
it  has  even  been  assumed  that  the  case  worker  is 
a  sort  of  social  telephone  operator  whose  sole 
duty  is  (figuratively  speaking)  to  sit  at  the 
switchboard,  pull  out  one  plug  and  push  in 
another.  In  almost  any  profession  the  practi- 
tioner who  aims  to  do  thorough  work  must  often 
114 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

act  as  a  middleman,  but  when  it  comes  to  defin- 
ing his  task  we  must  be  on  our  guard  against 
substituting  the  part  for  the  whole,  the  means 
for  the  end. 

Absence  in  any  given  community  of  the  social 
resources  and  expert  services  of  many  kinds 
which  have  so  enriched  case  work  becomes  a 
double  challenge  to  that  community's  case  work- 
ers— a  challenge  to  their  ingenuity  in  developing 
possible  substitutes  for  needed  resources  and  a 
challenge  to  their  public  spirit,  which  should 
push  hard  to  secure  the  community  agencies  still 
lacking,  and  should  use,  in  the  pushing,  such 
effective  arguments  and  illustrations  as  their  case 
work  cannot  fail  to  yield.  One  relation  between 
case  work  and  the  whole  varied  program  of  social 
advance  has  been  suggested  in  this  last  sentence. 
There  is  a  network  of  such  relations,  in  fact,  some 
of  which  I  hope  to  describe  later;  for  however 
broadly  we  may  define  case  work  it  would  be  a 
mere  fragment  without  the  complete  social  work 
program  of  which  it  is  only  a  part. 

All  of  the  items  given  thus  far  from  my  list  of 
environmental  adjustments  assume  no  change  to 
115 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

another  and  entirely  different  environment.  It 
is  not  always  enough,  however,  to  attempt  an  ad- 
justment between  a  client  and  his  present  sur- 
roundings; change  of  surroundings  is  also  an 
important  resource.  Sometimes  the  change  is 
temporary,  sometimes  permanent.  That  the  en- 
vironment which  should  have  been  a  builder  of 
personality  can  be  actively  anti-social  instead  is 
illustrated  in  George  Foster's  case.  Here  the 
"adjustments"  of  my  definition,  if  they  were  to 
assure  the  desired  development,  had  to  be  ef- 
fected outside  his  own  home;  the  boy  was  re- 
moved from  his  parents  permanently.  Probably 
the  home  that  Maria  Bielowski's  stepmother 
maintained  could  not  be  described  as  anti-social 
but,  given  the  cumulative  misunderstandings  be- 
tween the  two  and  the  fact  that  they  had  sepa- 
rated before  the  case  worker  knew  them,  a  per- 
manent change  for  Maria  seemed  necessary. 
Rupert  Young  and  his  wife  needed  only  a  short 
period  of  separation  and  changed  environment  to 
bring  them  together  in  a  better  mood;  Clara 
Vansca  needed  a  longer  period,  followed  by  con- 
tinuous and  painstaking  readjustment  to  the 
116 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

responsibilities  of  family  life ;  and  we  have  seen 
how  skilfully  Miss  Sullivan  used  this  resource  of 
temporary  change.  It  is  easier  to  acquire  new 
habits  in  a  new  place;  they  are  not  fully  tested, 
however,  until  they  have  been  successfully  fitted 
into  the  social  matrix  of  the  client's  original  sur- 
roundings, provided  a  return  to  these  surround- 
ings is  desirable  or  possible.  This  is  an  argument 
for  making  our  adjustments  more  slowly,  if  nec- 
essary, and  without  removal  to  a  new  environ- 
ment, as  in  Winifred  Jones's  case.  In  the  Allegri 
family  the  elderly  un-Americanized  mother  was 
returned  to  older  and  more  familiar  conditions, 
while  her  daughter  Teresa  was  sent  to  a  new 
home  which  was  smartly  American,  though  to 
one  in  which  the  ties  of  kinship  were  fully  rec- 
ognized. 

Another  aspect  of  changed  environment  is 
presented  by  the  needs  of  those  clients  of  dif- 
ferent national  and  racial  backgrounds  in  which 
the  change  had  been  made  before  they  became 
known  to  the  case  worker  and  through  immigra- 
tion to  the  United  States.  Usually  it  has  been 
assumed  that  adjustments  in  the  process  of 
117 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Americanization  should  all  be  made  on  the  side 
of  the  immigrant,  who  is  to  learn  our  language, 
study  our  institutions,  accept  our  ways,  without 
any  modifications  in  our  own  plans  and  pur- 
poses. But  the  case  worker's  attitude  toward 
this  problem  is  one  which  recognizes  the  need  of 
adjustments  on  both  sides.  Even  so,  the  social 
adjuster  cannot  succeed  without  sympathetic  un- 
derstanding of  the  Old  World  backgrounds  from 
which  his  clients  came.  A  portion  of  that  older 
civilization  actually  emigrated  when  the  Allegris 
took  passage  for  America,  and  when  Clara 
Vansca's  and  Maria  Bielowski's  parents  came 
over. 

Ties  of  kinship  have  so  many  implications  that 
I  must  refer  to  them  again.  Let  it  serve  at  pres- 
ent to  note  that  Rupert  Young  and  his  wife  were 
more  heartily  agreed  about  their  little  girl  than 
about  any  other  one  thing;  it  was  the  thought  of 
her  future  and  of  their  responsibility  for  it  which 
brought  and  kept  them  together  again.  Clara 
Vansca's  whole  conception  of  a  home  centered 
around  her  children,  and  the  conception  grew  as 
the  two  girls  developed  toward  womanhood.  In 
118 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

her  case,  the  recognition  of  the  children  by  her 
kindred  and  the  consequent  enrichment  of  their 
social  background  had  a  further  bearing  upon 
her  development.  This  sense  of  belonging  once, 
more,  of  having  a  past,  a  present,  and  a  futurel 
that  bear  some  relation  to  one  another,  is  best 
illustrated,  perhaps,  in  Winifred  Jones's  his- 
tory, though  with  her  these  different  time  aspects 
are  not  yet  welded  into  a  completely  unified 
whole.  Certainly  Mrs.  Jones  was  stirred  as  she 
had  not  been  for  many  years  by  her  brother's 
re-entrance  into  her  life,  and  it  has  meant  a  great 
deal  to  her  children  in  a  new  sense  of  social  con- 
nections and  backing.  As  regards  the  Allegris, 
though  developments  here  are  still  very  recent, 
it  is  evident  that  the  solution  must  be  found,  if 
found  at  all,  through  the  relatives. 

This  analysis  of  outside  resources  is  not  ex- 
haustive. Its  most  serious  gap  is  that  it  records 
no  very  effective  use  of  occupational  resources 
and  of  employers.  Working  homes  were  found 
for  Maria  Bielowski,  one  of  Clara  Vansca's  em- 
ployers was  co-operative  and  helpful,  and  the 
employer  of  Winifred  Jones's  oldest  girl  was 
119 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

induced  to  keep  her  on  during  a  slack  time  in  his 
factory.  But  these  few  items  give  little  idea  of 
the  varied  things  that  case  workers  can  do  in  ad- 
justing a  worker  to  the  occupation  for  which  he 
seems  best  fitted,  in  assuring  better  training  for 
it,  and  in  interesting  employers  in  the  personality 
problems  of  individual  workers.  This  weakness 
in  the  illustrative  material  that  I  have  employed 
is  accounted  for,  in  part  at  least,  by  the  fact  that 
these  illustrations  were  gathered  just  after  a 
period  of  unusual  industrial  prosperity.  Rupert 
Young  was  earning  at  last  accounts  from  $40  to 
$60  a  week;  Antonina  Allegri  had  been  earning 
$37  a  week  before  her  marriage.  The  many- 
sided  relation  of  case  work  to  the  problems  of  in- 
dustry is  not  indicated  here,  but  I  shall  have 
something  to  say  about  it  in  another  connection. 
Another  gap  in  my  material  could  be  filled  by 
cases  in  which  more  radical  changes  in  housing 
conditions  had  been  a  part  of  the  social  treat- 
ment. But  here  again  there  has  been  a  house 
famine  in  many  parts  of  the  United  States  during 
the  last  few  years  and  few  people  have  moved 
who  could  stay  in  their  present  quarters.  Rupert 
120 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

Young  has  moved  into  four  rooms  instead  of  two, 
and  the  social  worker  has  been  able  to  get  Mrs. 
Allegri  out  of  the  damp  place  which  was  so  bad 
for  her  rheumatism ;  but  the  housing  of  Winifred 
Jones's  family  is  not  what  it  should  be,  and  Clara 
Vansca's  street  could  be  better,  though  her  rooms 
and  her  landlord  are  satisfactory.  Naturally,  in 
any  aspect  of  family  life  so  important  as  housing 
the  case  worker  makes  every  endeavor  to  improve 
conditions. 

Here  we  have  such  details  of  these  four  proc- 
esses as  I  have  been  able  to  recognize  and  to 
name  briefly.  |  They  are  suggestive  merely  of  the 
beginnings  of  a  new  kind  of  specialized  skill 
which  has  for  its  aim  the  effecting  of  better  ad- 
justments between  the  individual  human  being 
and  the  world  in  which  he  must  live.  No  scale 
has  yet  been  devised  by  social  workers  for  meas- 
uring such  gains  in  personality  as  are  the  result 
of  their  case  work.  Dr.  Healy  suggests  a  few  of 
the  qualities  for  which  social  case  workers  should 
look  when  they  gather  data  about  individuality.* 
*  See  footnote  to  p.  104. 
121 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Some  of  the  qualities  he  enumerates  are  applica- 
ble to  personality  also — such  as,  for  example, 
truthfulness,  affection,  sympathy,  and  responsi- 
bility. In  the  long  run,  personality  must  be 
measured  by  the  social  qualities,  by  loyalty  to 
one's  fellows,  by  courage  for  and  interest  in  a 
game  of  life  which  is  no  mere  game  of  self-seek- 
ing. But  development  can  be  measured  along 
every  step  of  the  way  toward  these  qualities. 
There  is  nothing  static  about  personality — it  may 
become  weakened  as  our  bodies  do;  it  may  be 
restored  to  health  again  as  they  often  are. 

I  have  said  that  any  single  item  of  service  in 
the  long  list  of  items  enumerated  in  this  chapter 
might  have  been  accomplished  by  an  intelligent 
person  with  tact  and  goodwill,  but  that  the 
combination  of  these  services  would  have  been 
beyond  him  unless  he  had  had  previous  training 
for  the  task.  Consider,  for  a  moment,  what  that 
combination  involved  in  just  one  of  the  given 
cases. 

Maria  Bielowski's  probation  officer  had  to 
know  which  facts  in  her  probationer's  past  were 
most  likely  to  reveal  the  innate  make-up  of  the 

122 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

girl,  and  which  would  show  the  effects  of  environ- 
ment upon  her  personality.  She  also  had  to  know 
how,  setting  appearances  aside,  to  get  evidence 
bearing  upon  these  points  from  relatives,  teach- 
ers, and  employers ;  and  how,  after  discarding  ir- 
relevant testimony,  to  draw  the  correct  inferences 
from  the  relevant.  It  was  important,  moreover,  to 
find  the  right  home  for  Maria  to  live  in,  since  her 
own  seemed  to  be  the  wrong  one,  and  to  induce 
those  in  charge  of  that  home  to  receive  her.  Fur- 
ther, the  probation  officer  had  to  report  all  these 
facts  and  procedures  to  the  judge,  doing  this  so 
concisely,  clearly,  and  without  bias  that  he  would 
be  able  to  arrive  promptly  at  a  just  decision. 
Omitting  all  mention  of  the  training  given  to 
Maria  at  the  school  during  the  next  eight  months, 
consider  also  what  her  guardian  had  to  know 
about  the  use  of  medical  and  mental  specialists, 
about  the  careful  selection  of  working  homes  for  a 
difficult  girl,  about  co-operation  with  her  teachers, 
and  the  discovery  of  suitable  recreational  oppor- 
tunities. None  of  this  specialized  experience  was 
any  more  important,  however,  than  were  the 
skill,  insight,  and  patience  required  in  dealing 
123 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

with  the  girl  herself.  It  was  necessary  to  know 
what  Maria  was  doing  without  discouraging  her 
own  initiative.  It  was  necessary  to  win  her  ac- 
tive participation  in  all  plans  without,  however, 
slipping  into  that  easy  compliance  with  the  girl's 
whims  which  would  only  have  lost  her  respect. 
It  was  necessary  to  have  an  alternative  plan 
ready  promptly — a  new  working  home,  a  change 
of  occupation,  a  different  recreational  program — 
whenever  earlier  plans  were  no  longer  yielding  the 
best  results.  And  the  combination  of  all  these 
services,  leading  at  last  to  marked  growth  in 
Maria's  personality,  constituted  intensive  social 
case  work  of  professional  grade. 

In  all  of  the  six  cases  reviewed,  sixteen  people 
were  directly  concerned.  Are  they,  unforeseen 
accident  aside,  assured  of  a  better  relation  to 
their  world,  a  stronger  personal  development  be- 
!  cause  of  the  social  case  treatment  they  have  re- 
ceived? Given  the  facts  as  here  set  down,  and 
given  the  mental  attitudes  and  external  condi- 
tions of  these  clients  when  case  workers  first 
found  them,  has  there  or  has  there  not  been  a 
degree  of  growth  for  all  of  them  and  marked 
124 


SOCIAL  CASE  WORK  DEFINED 

development  for  considerably  more  than  half  of 
the  sixteen?  I  do  not  attempt  to  give  a  categor- 
ical answer  to  my  question.  Let  each  one  of 
my  readers  give  his  own. 


125 


V 
HUMAN  INTERDEPENDENCE 

A  I  ^HE  hero  in  Johan  Bojer's  The  Face  of  the 
A  World — a  hero  whose  mind  had  been  pre- 
occupied with  systems,  theories,  and  gospels — 
finally  learned  to  say  to  himself,  "Don't  despise  a 
single  human  being !  He  is  made  of  the  same  ma- 
terial as  mankind  in  general.  The  infinite  world 
is  mirrored  in  the  small.  You,  who  want  to  take 
every  one  with  you  on  the  way  to  the  great  dawn, 
help  that  man!"  I  quote  this  conclusion  of 
Harold  Mark's  at  the  beginning  of  a  chapter  on 
the  relation  of  the  individual  to  society  because, 
in  any  attempt  to  find  an  underlying  philosophy 
of  case  work  the  personal  side  of  it  is  so  easily  lost 
sight  of.  Case  workers  must  not  forget  that 
there  can  be  neither  discovery  nor  advance  with- 
out a  spirit  of  devotion  to  the  human  element  in 
which  they  are  working. 

Writing,  in  a  personal  letter,  of  the  least  hope- 
126 


HUMAN  INTERDEPENDENCE 

ful  and  most  depressing  of  all  forms  of  institu- 
tional work,  a  social  case  worker  in  a  certain  alms- 
house said  recently,  "Anyone  who  loves  books 
sees  something  in  an  old  leather-bound  copy  of  a 
half-forgotten  story  that  is  totally  lacking  in  a 
nice,  fresh,  cloth-bound  best  seller,  and  it  is  a 

little  the  same  way  about  the  patients  at  J . 

These  obscure  people  with  their  lonely  trage- 
dies get  a  tremendous  hold  on  every  one  who 
comes  to  know  them."  This  is  the  spirit  which 
destroys  stratification,  and  when  one  finds  some 
social  workers  advocating  one  type  of  social  case 
work  for  those  below  what  they  call  "the  poverty 
line,"  and  another  and  presumably  higher  type 
for  those  above  it,  the  old  habit  of  making  un- 
necessary class  distinctions  seems  to  be  reassert- 
ing itself  in  a  strange  place.  The  conscientious 
physician  does  not  use  one  type  of  practice  for 
the  poor  and  another  for  the  well-to-do.  Huxley 
said  a  word  which  should  help  to  set  the  strati- 
fiers  straight  when  he  wrote:  "I  sometimes  wonder 
whether  people  who  talk  so  freely  about  extir- 
pating the  unfit,  ever  dispassionately  considered 
their  own  history.  Surely  one  must  be  very  '  fit ' 
127 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

indeed  not  to  know  of  an  occasion,  or  perhaps 
two,  in  one's  life  when  it  would  have  been  only 
too  easy  to  qualify  for  a  place  among  the  unfit."* 

A  reviewer  of  an  earlier  book  of  mine  on  social 
work  was  good  enough  to  remark  that  its  pages 
were  "nothing  if  not  concrete."  At  the  risk  of 
seeming*  to  go  to  the  other  extreme  in  this  book, 
I  wish  to  push  the  definition  attempted  in  my  last 
chapter  a  few  steps  further  by  striving  to  relate 
social  case  work  to  the  other  conscious  attempts 
to  adjust  the  life  of  man  in  society.  The  case 
worker  has  his  specialized  skill,  but  back  of  that 
must  lie  a  philosophy.  If  we  would  understand 
what  social  case  work  is  we  must  realize  why.it  is, 
and  push  that  why  beyond  the  accidents  of  civili- 
zation to  its  main  stream  of  advance.  If  social 
case  work  has  a  place  in  the  world  order — not 
only  a  part  today,  important  as  that  is,  but  a 
permanent  part  in  making  this  world  a  better  one 
to  live  in — what  is  that  part  and  what  that  place? 

I  approach  this  division  of  my  subject  not  in 

*  Huxley,  Thos.:  Evolution  and  Ethics,  p.  39.  (Quoted 
by  Edwin  G.  Conklin  in  The  Direction  of  Human  Evolu- 
tion.) 

128 


HUMAN  INTERDEPENDENCE 

the  most  logical  way  perhaps,  but  in  the  way  in 
which  its  significance  was  gradually  brought 
home  to  a  social  worker  whose  interest  in  philos- 
ophy had  to  develop  out  of  the  day's  work.  I 
grew  up  in  a  world  which  held  very  romantic, 
"solitary  horseman"  views  of  the  individual.  He 
had  been  trapped  into  the  social  contract,  we  used 
to  think,  and  should  protect  himself  against  its 
encroachments  as  best  he  could.  I  still  remem- 
ber the  sense  of  shock  with  which  I  came  upon 
the  theory  that  society  had  existed  before  man,* 
and  it  was  many  years  after  that  discovery  be- 
fore the  concepts  of  modern  psychology  brought 
home  to  me  a  realization  of  the  way  in  which  a 
human  being's  knowledge  of  his  very  self  is  pieced 
together  laboriously  out  of  his  observations  of  the 
actions  and  reactions  of  others.  James  Mark 
Baldwin  was  one  of  the  first  psychologists  to 
illustrate  this  discovery.  He  says  in  his  Social  and 
Ethical  Interpretations, 

The  development  of  the  child's  personality  could  not  go 
on  at  all  without  the  constant  modification  of  his  sense  of 

M 

*  In  Prince  Kropotkin's  Mutual  Aid,  a  Factor  of  Evolu- 
tion? 

9  129 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

himself  by  suggestions  from  others.  So  he  himself,  at 
every  stage,  is  really  in  part  someone  else,  even  in  his  own 
thought  of  himself. 

And  in  a  section  on  social  heredity,  Baldwin  adds : 

He  is  born  into  a  system  of  social  relationships  just  as 
he  is  born  into  a  certain  quality  of  air.  As  he  grows  in 
body  by  breathing  the  one,  so  he  grows  in  mind  by  ab- 
sorbing the  other.  The  influence  is  just  as  real  and  as 
tangible.    .    .  * 

Royce  develops  the  same  point  of  view  in  a 
number  of  passages,  of  which  the  following  one  is 
fairly  typical : 

In  brief,  then,  I  should  assert  here,  as  a  matter  of 
psychology,  what  I  have  elsewhere  worked  out  more  at 
length,  that  a  child  is  taught  to  be  self-conscious  just  as  he 
is  taught  everything  else,  by  the  social  order  that  brings 
him  up.  Could  he  grow  up  alone  with  lifeless  nature, 
there  is  nothing  to  indicate  that  he  would  become  as  self- 
conscious  as  is  now  a  fairly  educated  cat.f 

Professor  George  M.  Mead,  of  the  University 
of  Chicago,  has  advanced  this  position  a  step 

*  Baldwin,  James  Mark:  Social  and  Ethical  Interpreta- 
tions in  Mental  Development,  p.  30  and  p.  70.  New  York, 
The  Macmillan  Co.,  1902. 

f  Royce,  Josiah:  Studies  of  Good  and  Evil,  p.  208.  New 
York,  D.  Appleton  and  Co.,  19 10. 

130 


HUMAN  INTERDEPENDENCE 

further  by  taking  the  view  that  society  is  not 
only  the  medium  in  which  personality  is  devel- 
oped but  its  source  and  origin.  Unfortunately  he 
has  published  little,  and  that  little  is  not  very 
accessible  to  the  general  reader. 

This  explanation  of  man's  mental  life  and 
growth  has  sometimes  been  called  the  theory  of 
the  wider  self.  It  is  one  of  the  foundation  stones 
of  social  case  work.  We  all  need  to  get  rid  of 
whatever  vestige  of  an  idea  still  remains  with  us 
that  a  man's  mind  is  somewhere  in  his  head,  or 
that  it  has  any  location  in  space  whatever.  At 
any  given  time  a  man's  mental  make-up  is  the  sum 
of  his  natural  endowment  and  his  social  experi- 
ences and  contacts  up  to  that  time.  Fortunately 
for  the  social  case  worker,  the  human  mind  is  not 
a  fixed  and  unalterable  thing,  unless  it  be  defec- 
tive or  hopelessly  diseased.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 
a  living,  growing,  changing,  highly  suggestible 
thing,  capable  of  receiving  strong  impressions 
from  without,  of  forming  new  habits,  of  respond- 
ing to  opportunity,  of  assimilating  the  good  as 
well  as  the  bad.  "Of  all  animals,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Hocking,  "it  is  man  in  whom  heredity 
131 


^ 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

\  counts  for  least  and  conscious  building  forces  for 
J  most.  Consider  that  his  infancy  is  longest,  his 
power  of  habit  making  and  habit  changing  most 
marked,  his  susceptibility  to  social  impressions 
keenest, — and  it  becomes  clear  that  nature  has 
provided  in  him  for  her  own  displacement. 
.  .  .  Other  creatures  nature  could  largely 
finish:  the  human  creature  must  finish  himself."* 
It  follows  that  case  workers  can  know  a  very 
important  part  of  a  client's  life  and  can  under- 
stand his  difficulties  and  his  possibilities  far  bet- 
ter when  they  have  succeeded  in  getting  a  fairly 
clear  picture  of  his  social  relationships — when 
they  know,  for  example,  the  attitude  of  his  home 

I  folks,  cronies,  shop-mates,  political  associates, 
church  associates  toward  him  and  his  toward 
them ;  when  they  know,  moreover,  his  relation  to 
his  work,  his  recreation,  his  neighborhood  or  com- 
munity institutions,  and  to  his  country. 

When  I  happened  to  tell  a  single  incident  from 
the  story  of  Maria  Bielowskif  in  a  classroom,  one 

*  Hocking,  William  Ernest:   Human  Nature  and  Its  Re- 
making, pp.  9-10.  New  Haven,  Yale  University  Press,  19 18. 
f  See  Chapter  II. 

132 


HUMAN  INTERDEPENDENCE 

of  my  auditors  afterwards  ventured  the  opinion 
that  Maria's  guardian  must  be  a  psychiatrist, 
while  another  asked  whether  she  was  not  a 
teacher.  Still  another  might  well  have  asked 
whether  she  was  not  a  physician  or  a  public 
health  nurse,  for  as  a  matter  of  fact  social  case 
work  and  each  of  these  other  professions  occupies 
not  only  its  own  special  field  but  a  wide  space  of 
ground  in  common.  That  each  has  its  own  task? 
however,  is  illustrated  by  the  psychiatrist  and 
the  social  worker.  Beginning  near  the  center  of 
a  problem  of  diseased  personality,  the  psychia- 
trist bores  in  and  in,  while  the  social  worker's 
sphere  of  action  radiates  outward  along  all  the 
lines  of  a  client's  social  relations.  Where  a  mal- 
adjustment proves  to  be  predominantly  individ- 
ual and  mental,  one  form  of  skill  is  needed ;  where 
it  is  predominantly  environmental  and  social  the 
other;  while  both  are  probably  indispensable 
where  there  is  a  disturbed  personality  in  an  un- 
favorable and  complicated  social  situation. 

The  particular  approach   by  way  of  man's 
social  relations,  though  no  substitute  for  that 
of  any   of  the   other  professions  just  named, 
133 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

becomes  increasingly  indispensable  as  the  char- 
acter of  human  evolution  changes  from  the  pre- 
dominantly physical  and  individual  to  the  social. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  a  "self-made  man,"  and 
the  phrase,  once  so  popular,  has  fallen  into  disuse. 
It  may  happen  to  any  one  of  us  at  any  time  and 
has  already  happened  to  every  one  of  us  more 
than  once,  to  fall  out  of  adjustment  with  our 
world  through  some  failure  to  meet  our  opportun- 
ities, some  temporary  shock  from  without,  or 
through  irreparable  loss.  The  more  complicated 
the  mechanism  of  society  and  the  more  highly 
organized  the  individual,  the  more  delicate,  under 
any  of  these  circumstances,  does  the  task  of  re- 
adjustment become. 

A  sense  of  frustration  cannot  be  overcome  by 
cheerful  and  vague  general  advice.  For  this  type 
of  social  treatment  it  is  necessary  for  a  worker  to 
learn  the  art  of  discovering  the  major  interests  of 
the  individual,  and  of  utilizing  them  to  reknit  a 
broken  connection  or  to  supply  a  motive  lacking 
before.    To  illustrate: 

A  former  student  of  mine,  working  in  a  part  of 
the  country  where  organized  medical-social  work  was  un- 

134 


HUMAN  INTERDEPENDENCE 

known,  found  herself  often  called  upon,  as  secretary  of  the 
family  welfare  society  of  the  town,  to  help  the  local  physi- 
cians in  pellagra  cases.  As  soon  as  these  doctors  discov- 
ered what  her  social  case  work  skill  could  accomplish,  they 
began  to  seek  her  aid  in  cases  which  were  uncomplicated 
by  economic  need  or  family  maladjustment.  At  one  stage 
of  this  disease  the  patient  suffers  from  a  horrible  depres- 
sion of  spirits.  Aggressive  cheerfulness  in  the  nurse  or 
caretaker  only  increases  the  depression,  whereas  one  who 
knows  how  to  fill  in  the  social  backgrounds  and  foregrounds 
of  the  patient's  past  can  often  find  in  them  some  interest 
to  be  revived,  some  taste  to  be  cultivated,  and  can  thus 
supply  the  one  thing  which  makes  life  seem  worth  living. 

Two  college  mates  of  my  acquaintance  became,  after 
their  graduation  years  ago,  volunteer  assistants  in  the 
family  social  work  societies  of  their  separate  cities.  One 
of  them  made  the  acquaintance,  in  the  course  of  her  work, 
of  a  deserted  wife  and  her  three  small  children.  The  home 
conditions  were  pitiable,  and  she  set  to  work  at  once  to 
improve  the  health  and  material  welfare  of  the  family, 
while  seeking  to  discover  at  the  same  time  the  where- 
abouts of  the  missing  husband  and  father.  He  was  found 
in  the  city  in  which  her  classmate  lived.  Accordingly, 
this  college  friend  was  asked  to  make  his  acquaintance. 
He  had  travelled  there  in  search  of  work,  had  found  it, 
and  had  gradually  drifted  into  ignoring  his  absent  family 
altogether,  spending  his  money  instead  upon  his  own 
pleasures. 

These  two  earnest  women  began  to  devise  various  plans 
to  bring  him  back  to  a  sense  of  his  responsibilities, 

135 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

with  such  happy  results  at  last  that  not  only  was  the  fam- 
ily permanently  reunited  but  more  prosperous  than  it  had 
ever  been  before.  When,  long  after,  I  asked  the  second 
volunteer  what,  in  her  opinion,  had  been  the  secret  of 
success  in  this  particular  social  venture,  she  replied,  "I  at- 
tribute its  beginnings,  at  least,  to  the  fact  that  I  dis- 
covered the  man's  one  serious  interest  in  life  and  was  able 
to  build  on  that.  He  was  ardently  devoted  to  his  trade- 
union  and,  when  he  found  that  I  too  was  a  unionist  and 
knew  a  good  deal  about  the  details  of  the  movement,  we 
had  a  common  meeting  ground.  It  was  in  this  way  that 
he  became  increasingly  willing  to  attend  to  what  I  had  to 
say  about  his  children  and  their  future." 

J  In  other  words,  a  genuine  interest  in  any  seri- 
ous or  any  wholesome  thing  has  within  it  the 
latent  power  of  radiation,  of  making  connection, 
that  is,  with  other  interests  of  equal  or  greater 
value,  provided  we  are  at  all  skilful  in  clearing  a 
pathway  along  which  the  separate  ideas  can  meet 
and  join. 

When  I  have  to  sit  in  conference  where  such 
cases  of  social  maladjustment  as  the  one  last  des- 
cribed are  under  current  discussion,  I  am  always 
grateful  to  the  reporter  of  the  particular  situation 
when  he  does  not  confine  himself  too  closely  to 
the  bald  statement  of  the  immediate  difficulty 

136 


HUMAN  INTERDEPENDENCE 

in  which  his  client  finds  himself.  The  way  out, 
when  one  is  found,  is  more  likely  to  come  from 
consideration  of  the  nearest  approach  to  normal 
living  in  the  past,  or  from  a  realization  of  what 
the  client's  genuine  interests  are  and  what  past 
experiences  have  molded  him  for  better  or  for 
worse.  Unfortunately,  many  decisions,  involving 
the  whole  future  of  a  client  in  some  cases — deci- 
sions about  physical  care,  mental  health,  voca- 
tional training,  change  of  occupation,  and  so  on — 
are  still  made  without  any  such  sense  of  the  value 
and  significance  of  background,  of  natural  inter- 
ests and  natural  ties.  Here  is  the  client  and  here 
the  person  in  a  position  to  make  decisions  and 
plans.  The  assumption  is  that  the  situation  pre- 
sented involves  one  person  or  one  family  on  a 
desert  island /whereas  each  of  us  is  surrounded  by 
a  network  of  relationships — some  no  longer  ac- 
tively operating,  some  now  active  but  easily  dis- 
arranged or  destroyed  by  careless  interference, 
others  certain  to  remain  active  no  matter  what 
decision  is  made. 

In  making  any  decision  affecting  the  welfare  of 
another  (and  such  decisions  will  have  to  be  made 
137 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

under  any  social  order  yet  conceived  of)  the  desert 
island  theory  of  responsibility  to  our  fellows  is 
no  longer  a  tenable  theory,  no  longer  tenable  in 
the  extreme  instance  even  of  the  foundling  on  the 
doorstep ;  he  too,  by  the  mere  fact  of  his  existence, 
bears  witness  to  human  relations  which  the  re- 
sponsible members  of  society  cannot  ignore. 

In  earlier  days,  when  social  case  treatment  may 
be  said  to  have  had  only  one  dimension,  there  was 
just  the  case  worker  and  his  client,  and  in  theory 
at  least,  the  client,  save  for  the  social  agency  then 
dealing  with  him,  was  assumed  to  be  utterly  re- 
sourceless.  Then  the  social  worker  looked  abroad 
somewhat  and  tried  to  master  a  routine  of  seeing, 
one  by  one,  his  client's  relatives,  teachers,  em- 
ployers, and  others  who  knew  him,  with  a  view  to 
getting  their  experiences  with  the  client  and  pos- 
sibly their  assistance  in  his  treatment.  This  fur- 
ther stage  may  be  said  to  have  added  a  second 
dimension  to  case  work.  No  longer  was  it  linear 
only;  it  had  breadth.  But  the  fact  that  social 
relationships  are  dynamic  suggests  that  the  next 
stage  of  development  is  to  bring  the  client  and 
those  to  whom  he  is  socially  related  together,  or 

138 


HUMAN  INTERDEPENDENCE 

to  bring  him  in  contact  with  some  of  these  associ- 
ates at  least,  and  then  to  observe  the  relationship 
"in  being,"  instead  of  merely  gathering  a  report 
of  it  at  second  hand.  These  observations  should 
be  made,  of  course,  in  order  to  be  acted  upon.  In 
some  places  the  study  and  use  of  actual  group  re- 
actions are  already  giving  case  work  this  third  di- 
mension. The  Allegri  family  council  described  in 
Chapter  III  is  a  case  in  point.  The  interviews 
one  by  one  with  different  relatives  and  friends 
prepared  the  way  for  this  council,  but  only  after 
all  had  been  brought  together  in  one  place  and 
had  actually  participated  in  deciding  upon  a  plan 
did  it  assume  proportions  and  solidity. 

Years  ago  an  English  colony  of  button  makers  settled 
in  a  New  England  city.  One  of  the  men  in  the  colony, 
himself  the  son  of  a  button  maker,  had  several  sons  of  his 
own  who  entered  the  same  trade.  One  of  these  sons,  the 
subject  of  the  present  illustration,  married  the  daughter  of 
a  button  maker,  and  her  brothers  had  established  a 
button  factory.  This  married  couple  had  six  children,  all 
of  them  delicate  and  some  with  serious  physical  handicaps. 

The  particular  branch  of  the  industry  with  which 
the  whole  family  connection  was  so  closely  identified  had 
long  periods  of  irregular  work;  the  conditions  of  the  work 
in  the  past,  moreover,  had  often  been  unwholesome. 

139 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Without  attempting  to  unravel  in  this  short  summary 
that  interplay  of  cause  and  effect  which  is  so  character- 
istic of  social  as  distinguished  from  natural  phenomena, 
it  must  suffice  to  record  here  that  the  man  took  to  drink, 
and  that,  in  milder  fashion,  his  wife  did  the  same.  Their 
relatives  became  estranged  from  them  and  their  home 
miserable.  It  was  at  this  stage  that  a  social  case 
worker  found  them.  She  was  still  able  to  recognize,  be- 
neath the  dirt  and  squalor,  marks  of  refinement.  Soon 
it  was  discovered,  by  physical  examination,  that  the  man 
had  tuberculosis,  but  go  to  a  sanatorium  he  would  not. 
He  and  his  wife  were  induced  to  take  a  journey  of  inspec- 
tion to  the  sanatorium  with  the  social  worker,  but  still  he 
resisted.  Then  inquiry  was  made  quietly  as  to  which  one 
of  his  shopmates  had  the  most  influence  over  him.  This 
fellow-workman  was  induced  to  intervene  and  actually 
accomplished  the  desired  result. 

Arrangements  were  then  made  to  keep  the  home  to- 
gether and  improve  its  living  conditions  during  the  man's 
absence.  The  varied  details  of  this  part  of  the  social 
worker's  program  do  not  concern  us  here.  But  it  should 
be  noted  that  relatives  living  in  several  states  were  all  seen, 
the  intercourse  broken  off  years  before  was  renewed,  and 
each  relative,  as  well  as  the  family's  church,  became  an 
active  participator  in  the  new  plans. 

Details  of  the  button  business  appear  and  reappear 
throughout  this  record.  After  the  head  of  the  family  had 
been  away  a  few  months,  the  brother-in-law  manufac- 
turer, who  formerly  had  had  no  interest  in  his  sister's 
husband,  offered  the  man  a  chance  to  do  less  exacting  work 

140 


HUMAN  INTERDEPENDENCE 

at  fairly  good  pay.  In  great  excitement  the  wife  had 
written  to  her  husband,  forwarding  this  offer  and  urging 
him  to  come  home  at  once.  But  after  writing  she  sought 
out  the  case  worker  and  told  her  what  she  had  done. 
Then  followed  telegrams  to  the  head  of  the  sanatorium, 
for  the  patient  was  not  yet  cured,  and  it  was  most  impor- 
tant that  he  should  remain  where  he  was.  An  under- 
standing was  next  arrived  at  with  the  prospective  em- 
ployer— the  brother-in-law — -that  the  same  work  would 
be  offered  a  few  months  later,  and  the  case  worker  was  au- 
thorized to  dispatch  a  second  message  to  the  sanatorium 
stating  that,  for  the  present,  the  place  had  been  rilled. 

Meanwhile  the  question  of  the  health  of  the  children 
had  been  taken  vigorously  in  hand.  Several  were  found 
to  be  pre-tubercular  and  one  to  have  first-stage  tubercu- 
losis. For  the  latter,  long-term  treatment  in  a  country 
place  was  provided;  for  the  former,  a  period  of  observa- 
tion in  a  state  institution.  Another  child  had  home  care 
for  a  serious  eye  condition.  It  was  no  small  task  to  re- 
pair the  neglect  of  years,  and  the  youngest  child,  a  baby, 
did  not  survive  its  second  summer.  The  other  children 
are  all  in  excellent  condition  now.  When  the  father  re- 
turned cured  and  able  to  do  a  full  day's  work,  he  found  a 
real  home  awaiting  him. 

In  addition  to  the  social  agencies,  four  groups  had  par- 
ticipated in  this  improvement.  As  all  knew  just  how  the 
change  was  accomplished  and  all  were  likely  to  be  in  con- 
tinuous relation  with  the  family,  it  is  improbable  that  the 
services  of  a  social  worker  will  be  needed  again.  To  use 
the  expression  of  the  social  worker  who  is  responsible  for 

141 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

this  result,  the  relatives,  the  family's  church,  the  man's 
fellow-employes,  and  his  employer  have  all  "learned  the 
game."    The  family  have  learned  it  too. 

Case  work  of  this  intensive  sort  takes  time  and 
skill,  but,  building  as  it  does  upon  the  social  re- 
lations of  a  whole  group,  it  has  a  permanence 
and  a  social  significance  that  more  than  justify 
the  effort.  As  practical  guides  in  such  work,  the 
social  psychologists  have  thus  far  been  of  very 
little  help.  Perhaps  one  reason  for  this  is  that 
the  social  psychologists  have  been  dealing  chiefly 
with  mass  reactions,  and  of  these  accurate  ob- 
servation and  reporting  is  almost  impossible. 
For  the  most  part,  therefore,  they  have  taken 
refuge  in  the  discussion  of  abstractions.  One 
bases  his  thesis  upon  a  single  instinct,  another 
attempts  to  classify  the  instincts,  others  study 
the  psychology  of  crowds.*  Why  not  reverse  the 
process  and  begin  the  study  of  social  psychology 

*  Walter  Lippmann  in  The  New  Republic  for  December 
15,  1920,  says,  ".  .  .  one  can  safely  assert  that  no  col- 
lective psychology  will  go  far  or  go  deep  which  starts  from 
the  group  as  a  whole  rather  than  from  the  disposition  of 
individuals  to  form  groups."  See  also  references  to  Pro- 
fessor Dewey's  criticisms  of  present  day  social  psychology 
in  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  Vol.  XX VI,  p.  454. 

142 


HUMAN'  INTERDEPENDENCE 

with  the  smallest  social  groupings  into  which  men 
have  formed  themselves?  The  laboratory  meth- 
od could  not  be  used,  but  the  method  of  trained 
and  accurate  observation  remains ;  and  an  exten- 
sion of  the  present  case  work  method,  still  far 
from  perfect  it  is  true,  but  yet  having  a  technique 
which  is  steadily  advancing,  would  supply  the 
social  psychologist  who  approached  his  subject 
by  way  of  the  small  group  with  a  supplementary 
tool  ready  to  his  hand. 

We  are  all  familiar  with  the  kind  of  sixth  sense 
of  neighborhood  standards  and  backgrounds 
which  we  are  accustomed  to  find  developed  in  the 
residents  of  a  good  social  settlement.  Between 
this  and  the  careful  case  work  analysis  of  individ- 
ual situations  there  is  a  field,  almost  unexplored 
as  yet,  which  might  profitably  engage  more  of  the 
social  psychologist's  attention.  With  feet  still 
upon  solid  earth,  he  might  then  extend  his  re- 
searches to  those  larger  groups  which  have  been 
developed  by  genuine  integration  from  the  smaller 
ones.  But  for  the  present,  at  least,  should  not  more 
time  be  devoted  to  the  study  of  the  normal  reac- 
tions of  groups  of  two  or  three  or  more,  under  con- 
ditions which  make  expert  observation  possible? 
143 


VI 

INDIVIDUAL  DIFFERENCES 

f  HAVE  said  that  the  central  aim  of  social 
case  work  is  the  maintenance  and  develop- 
ment of  personality,  and  that  it  shares  this  pur- 
pose with  a  number  of  other  forms  of  service. 
But  the  fields  of  education,  medicine,  psychiatry, 
religion,  and  social  case  work  are  not  identical; 
that  each  of  these  disciplines  can  and  should  learn 
from  the  others  does  not  establish'identity  either 
of  method  or  of  achievement.  Civilization  will 
advance  farther  with  less  breakage  by  the  way  if 
it  does  not  put  too  many  of  its  eggs  in  one  basket  ; 
if  it  encourages  the  teacher,  physician,  minister, 
social  worker,  each  to  do  what  each  knows  best 
how  to  do. 

We  have  seen  that  the  approach  of  the  social 

case  worker  to  his  task  is  by  way  of  the  study 

and  better  adjustment  of  man's  social  relations. 

Every  such  relation  has  two  poles,  one  in  the 

144 


INDIVIDUAL  DIFFERENCES 

mind  of  the  case  worker's  client  and  the  other  in 
his  environment — in  the  minds,  that  is,  of  other 
beings  or  groups  of  beings  with  whom  he  is  in  re- 
lation. No  one  can  draw  a  straight  line  and  place 
with  definiteness  upon  one  side  of  it  a  man's  in- 
herited traits,  and  upon  the  other  those  of  his 
characteristics  which  are  the  result  of  environ- 
ment. Life  is  not  so  simple  as  all  that.  But  the 
social  worker,  deeply  concerned  as  he  is  with  the 
group  relations  of  which  I  have  just  been  writing, 
must  not  ignore  the  other  aspect.  His  client's  na- 
tive endowment,  his  capacity,  his  personal  handi- 
caps and  idiosyncrasies,  the  special  ways  in  which 
he  differs  from  other  human  beings — these  things 
influence,  in  turn,  the  social  environment  by  and 
through  which  he  himself  is  to  be  influenced. 
"It  is  not  insignificant,"  says  Miss  Follett, 
"that  a  marked  increase  in  the  appreciation  of 
social  values  has  gone  hand  in  hand  with  a  grow- 
ing recognition  of  the  individual."*  And  the  dual 
nature  of  the  case  worker's  task  is  suggested  in 
the  statement  already  quoted   from  Professor 

♦Follett,  M.  P.:   The  New  State,  p.  162.    New  York, 
Longmans,  Green  and  Co.,  19 18. 

10  145 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Maciver  that  sociality  and  individuality  are  the 
two  aspects  of  one  reality.* 

This  brings  us  to  the  subject  of  heredity  versus 
environment.  I  must  leave  the  philosophers  here 
and  seek  the  guidance  of  biologists  and  eugenists 
on  the  one  hand  and  of  psychologists  and  sociolo- 
gists on  the  other.  One  of  the  best  authorities  in 
the  former  group  states  the  situation  as  follows : 

It  is  plain  that  environment  and  education  play  a  greater 
part  in  the  development  of  man  than  in  that  of  other 
animals,  whereas  heredity  plays  the  same  part;  but  it  is 
difficult  if  not  impossible  tf  determine  the  relative  im- 
portance of  these  three  factors.  In  the  field  of  intellect 
and  morals  most  persons  are  inclined  to  place  greater 
weight  upon  the  extrinsic  than  upon  the  intrinsic  factors, 
but  this  opinion  is  not  based  upon  demonstrable  evidence. 
So  far  as  organisms  below  man  are  concerned  there  is 
general  agreement  that  heredity  is  the  most  important 
factor,  and  this  opinion  is  held  also  for  man  by  those  who 
have  made  a  thorough  study  of  heredity."  f 

But  our  practical  difficulty  is  that  those  who 
have  made  a  thorough  study  of  heredity  have 
seldom  made  an  equally  thorough  study  of  the 

*  See  footnote,  p.  95. 

f  Conklin,  Edwin  Grant:  Heredity  and  Environment, 
pp.  366-67.    Princeton,  Princeton  University  Press,  19 16. 

146 


INDIVIDUAL  DIFFERENCES 

mental  and  social  life  of  man.  In  fact,  the  more 
one  reads  on  both  sides  of  this  subject  the  more 
evident  it  is  that  the  relative  importance  of  hered- 
ity and  environment  as  factors  in  human  welfare 
is  still  an  unsettled  question.  Dr.  Myerson,  in 
his  study  of  patients  at  the  Taunton  (Mass.) 
State  Hospital  for  the  insane,  suggests  that  the 
laws  of  Mendel  do  not  apply  to  human  inherit- 
ance for  the  reason  that  such  conditions  of  in- 
breeding as  were  carefully  observed  in  the 
Medelian  experiments  do  not  prevail  among 
human  beings.  "The  laws  of  Mendel,"  he  ex- 
plains, "have  not  been  shown  to  apply  for  any 
single  normal  human  character  of  simple  type, 
except  perhaps  eye  color."*  It  is  only  upon  phys- 
ical heredity,  moreover,  that  the  eugenists  speak 
with  authority;  social  inheritance,  with  which 
physical  inheritance  is  often  confused,  is  a  quite 
different  thing. 

Graham  Wallas  gives  us  some  illuminating 
pages  upon  the  latter  in  his  new  book,  Our  Social 

*  Myerson,  A.:  "Psychiatric  Family  Studies,"  The 
American  Journal  of  Insanity,  Vol.  LXXIII,  p.  360.  Balti- 
more, The  Johns  Hopkins  Press,  19 1 7. 

147 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Heritage.  Social  inheritance  belongs  not  to  man 
alone  but  to  any  animal  species  in  which  the 
young  remain  a  comparatively  long  time  with 
their  parents.  Thus  fishes  and  some  insects  have 
no  social  heritage,  whereas  birds,  which  are  longer- 
lived  than  certain  other  species  and  remain 
with  their  parents  a  longer  time,  do  have  it. 
What  this  social  heritage  means  as  a  factor  in 
survival  is  interestingly  set  forth  in  Wallas's 
introductory  chapter.*  The  effects  upon  man  of 
this  great  body  of  social  tradition,  so  potent  in 
habit  formation,  have  not  the  unalterable  charac^ 
ter  of  traits  transmitted  through  the  germ  plasm. 
It  is  an  inheritance,  however,  in  the  sense  that 
man  is  born  into  it,  and,  in  addition  to  this  in- 
heritance, all  the  environmental  effects  of  educa- 
tion, religion,  government,  and  social  intercourse 
upon  the  life  of  the  freely  moving  and  participat- 
ing individual,  are  still  to  be  reckoned  with.  The 
outlook  is  not  so  gloomy  as  some  eugenists  would 
have  us  believe,  when  they  advocate  the  abolition 
of  social  work  activities  and  the  turning  over  of 

*  Wallas,  Graham:  Our  Social  Heritage,  pp.  14-23.  New 
Haven,  Yale  University  Press,  1921. 

148 


INDIVIDUAL  DIFFERENCES 

moneys  thus  saved  for  the  prosecution  of  further 
eugenic  research. 

At  the  same  time,  the  fundamental  message  of 
the  eugenists  is  not  one  to  be  ignored.  Social 
workers  have  the  great  fact  of  ineradicable  in- 
dividual differences  in  human  beings  to  face. 
Democracy  must  face  it,  education  must  never 
lose  sight  of  it.  The  assertion  that  folks  are  dif- 
ferent seems  the  veriest  truism,  for  not  only  have 
we  their  inherited  and  unchangeable  differences 
to  reckon  with,  but  to  these  are  added  all  the  dis- 
similarities which  result  from  varying  social  expe- 
rience and  varying  responses  to  the  same  experi- 
ence. Nevertheless,  there  are  few  obvious  truths 
more  habitually  neglected  by  statesmen,  by  pub- 
lic administrators,  by  the  man  on  the  street,  and 
even,  I  regret  to  say,  by  the  rank  and  file  of  social 
workers  themselves.  The  correlative  truth  of 
man's  common  nature  is  the  one  still  emphasized 
and  rightly  so,  where  only  mass  action  and  mass 
treatment  can  achieve  the  desired  result. 

Our  first  vigorous  reactions  against  the  auto- 
cratic state  led  us  to  insist  not  only  upon  equality 
among  men  but  upon  their  resemblances  and 
149 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

even  upon  their  uniformity.    Equality,  as  Felix 
Adler  has  noted,  comes  to  be 

mistakenly  taken  to  mean  likeness  in  the  sense  of  same- 
ness, not  in  the  sense  of  that  fundamental  likeness  on  the 
background  of  which  the  desirable  unlikenesses  stand 
forth.  .  .  .  The  differences  are  to  be  stressed;  they 
are  the  coruscating  points  in  the  spiritual  life  of  mankind. 
^That  every  man  is  the  equal  of  his  fellows  means  that  he 
has  the  same  right  as  each  of  the  others  to  become  unlike 
the  others,  to  acquire  a  distinct  personality,  to  contribute 
his  one  peculiar  ray  to  the  white  light  of  the  spiritual 
life.* 

As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  more  than  a  trace  of 
autocracy  left  in  our  traditional  public  policy  of 
the  "same  thing  for  everybody."  I  called  atten- 
tion to  its  autocratic  trend  in  an  address  before 
the  National  Conference  of  Social  Work  in  1915.! 
Three  years  later,  Gertrude  Vaile  carried  the  idea 
further  before  the  same  body  J  in  a  paper  on  "The 
Contribution  of  Social  Case  Work  to  Democ- 

*  Adler,  Felix:  An  Ethical  Philosophy  of  Life,  p.  142  sq. 
New  York,  D.  Appleton  and  Co.,  19 18. 

f  Then  the  National  Conference  of  Charities.  See  Pro- 
ceedings for  19 1 5,  "The  Social  Case  Worker  in  a  Changing 
World,"  p.  43. 

t  Proceedings  for  1918,  p.  263. 
150 


INDIVIDUAL  DIFFERENCES 

racy,"  maintaining  that  equal  right  to  oppor- 
tunity was  what  our  forefathers  meant  when  they 
declared  that  "All  men  were  created  free  and 
equal."  In  evidence,  she  quoted  that  pregnant 
saying  of  Plato's  that  the  essence  of  equality  lies 
in  treating  unequal  things  unequally.*  If  we  are 
agreed  that  the  state  exists  for  the  highest  good 
of  its  members,  we  must  also  agree  that  there  is 
no  lesson  democracy  needs  to  take  more  to  heart 
today  than  this  lesson  in  sound  administration; 
namely,  Treat  unequal  things  unequally. 

I  have  sometimes  illustrated  the  popular  habit 
of  assuming  differences  and  of  ignoring  them  at 
one  and  the  same  time  by  the  way  in  which  our 
minds  tend  to  act  when  confronted  with  the  prob- 
lems of  an  unfamiliar  group  of  people — a  group  of 
Chinamen,  for  example.  Our  temptation  is  to 
assume  their  lack  of  any  broadly  human  resem- 
blances to  ourselves;  to  treat  them  as  a  class 
apart,  and  then  to  ignore  altogether  the  varia- 

*  Miss  Vaile  used,  and  so  do  I,  Dr.  Henry  Van  Dyke's 
striking  paraphrase  of  Plato's  words.  The  passage  will  be 
found  in  Book  VI  of  the  Laws,  pp.  273-74  of  Jowett's 
translation,  edition  of  187 1. 

151 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  GASE  WORK? 

tions  within  the  membership  of  the  group  itself. 
To  our  unaccustomed  eyes  these  Orientals  look 
alike  and  seem  alike,  and  we  are  betrayed  by  our 
ignorance  into  treating  them  alike.  Any  honest 
sharing  of  reality  with  them  would  bring  out  im- 
mediately their  individual  differences,  for  with 
each  examination  into  the  details  of  their  lives, 
social  stratifications  would  be  washed  away  and 
the  infinite  diversity  of  gifts,  of  characteristics, 
become  apparent.  Only  after  such  a  plunge  has 
been  made  repeatedly,  however,  do  we  arrive  at 
an  even  profounder  truth ;  only  then  do  we  begin 
to  realize  in  any  complete  sense  the  fundamental 
likenesses  of  our  human  kind  in  their  primary  re- 
lations and  experiences — in  their  struggles  and 
mistakes,  their  need  of  guidance,  their  right  to 
opportunity,  to  fuller  development,  to  diversity. 
During  the  first  year  of  federal  woman's  suf- 
frage, a  determined  effort  was  made  to  break 
down  the  legal  safeguards  which  social  work  had 
gradually  thrown  around  the  conditions  of  wom- 
en's industrial  employment.  In  the  name  of  an 
equality  which  meant  no  more  than  uniformity, 
many  well-intentioned  women  sought  the  aboli- 
152 


INDIVIDUAL  DIFFERENCES 

tion  of  all  this  protective  legislation.  Plato's 
formula  was  never  more  applicable.  Never  had 
it  been  more  important  for  the  sake  of  both  the 
race  and  the  individual  to  treat  unequal  things 
unequally. 

It  is  encouraging  to  find  a  seasoned  radical  like 
Graham  Wallas  urging  the  full  recognition  of  in- 
dividual differences  upon  democracy.  In  the 
field  of  education  he  imagines  the  teacher  asking 
himself  whether  he  shall  treat  all  his  pupils  alike 
or  base  his  treatment  of  them  on  their  differences, 
and  says  in  this  connection, 

No  perfectly  simple  answer  to  this  question  will  be 
possible  until  our  powers  of  psychological  testing  are  in- 
creased, and  until  social  equality  has  sufficiently  advanced 
to  make  the  differences  at  any  moment  between  children 
depend  much  more  than  they  do  at  present  upon  "nature," 
and  much  less  upon  the  "nurture"  of  rich  and  poor,  or  of 
educated  and  uneducated  homes.  But,  broadly  speaking, 
I  am  convinced  that  social  progress  already  lies  on  the 
line  of  recognized  difference.* 

Here  are  suggested  the  two  sides  of  a  genuinely 

democratic  program:    It  equalizes  opportunity 

by  intelligent  mass  action;   it  recognizes  diver- 

*  Our  Social  Heritage,  p.  98. 

153 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

sity  by  establishing  forms  of  public  administra- 
tion which  do  different  things  for  and  with  dif- 
ferent people  at  every  turn. 

In  its  gradual  unfolding,  case  work  method  has 
followed  very  closely  the  stages  that  have  just 
been  described.  In  the  past  it  has  assumed  at 
once  the  absence  of  universal  traits  in  a  human 
group  and  the  presence  there  of  a  rigid  group 
uniformity.  It  has  treated  unequal  things 
equally.  We  have  only  to  name  a  few  of  the 
familiar  classifications — the  unemployed,  family 
deserters,  recent  immigrants,  and  so  on — to 
realize  that  this  habit  still  persists  and  to  rec- 
ognize its  dangers.  Necessary  as  a  starting  point, 
the  classification  must  not  be  transformed  into  a 
goal.  Some  of  the  follies  lately  committed  in  the 
name  of  Americanization  are  directly  traceable  to 
the  practice  of  thinking  of  all  immigrants  as 
essentially  alike  and  to  be  treated  alike. 

Similarly,  the  beginning  of  wisdom  in  dealing 
with  the  problems  of  unemployed  men,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  problems  of  changing  eco- 
nomic and  social  conditions,  will  be  the  recogni- 
tion that  no  uniform  program  of  procedure  for  all 
154 


INDIVIDUAL  DIFFERENCES 

within  the  group  of  unemployed  can  succeed, 
because  members  of  the  group  will  differ  essen- 
tially even  in  the  one  characteristic  of  their  rela- 
tion to  industry.  Some  may  be  skilled  workers, 
accustomed  to  continuous  occupation;  some  un- 
skilled but  usually  fully  employed ;  others  casual 
workers;  and  still  others,  a  small  minority,  may 
be  unemployable. 

The  error  of  assuming  that  all  family  deserters 
are  alike  is  so  well  refuted  in  another  volume  of 
this  series*  that  I  need  not  mention  it  here. 

An  increasingly  courageous  plunging  beneath 
the  surface  of  things  by  the  social  case  workers  of 
our  own  day  has  convinced  the  more  progressive 
of  them,  at  least,  of  the  wonderful  diversity 
within  each  possible  social  grouping — diversity 
against  that  background  of  our  common  nature 
which  more  and  more  commands  their  reverence 
and  is  the  unifying  element  in  a  program  of  many 
details,  demanding  no  small  degree  of  skill  for  its 
mastery.  Confronted  by  any  omnibus  term  or 
general  remedy  for  a  social  situation,  their  minds 

*  Colcord,  Joanna  C:  Broken  Homes.  New  York, 
Russell  Sage  Foundation,  19 19. 

155 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

begin  to  seek  at  once  for  dissimilarities  within  the 
given  grouping,  and  for  corresponding  modifica- 
tions in  the  suggested  social  treatment.  The  old 
dead-and-alive  entries  of  former  days  in  social 
case  records,  such  as  "woman  tells  the  same  old 
story,"  are  disappearing,  making  way  in  the  case 
histories  of  many  social  agencies,  though  not  in 
all,  for  clear  and  faithful  pictures  of  well-dif- 
ferentiated people  and  situations.  A  former  stu- 
dent of  mine  writes,  "  I  find  that  social  case  work 
is  a  living,  growing  thing,  just  as  is  democracy, 
and  that  it  has  within  itself  the  capacity  for 
revolution.  In  fact,  there  can  be  no  true  democ- 
racy without  it." 

I  had  occasion  some  time  since  to  look  over  a 
number  of  pamphlets  issued  more  than  forty 
years  ago,  when  the  charity  organization  move- 
ment was  beginning  to  take  root  in  America. 
One  of  the  early  leaders  of  the  movement  then 
wrote,  "When  we  fairly  settle  down  to  the  ad- 
ministration of  charity  on  a  judicial  system,  it 
will  be  seen  that  nearly  all  cases  naturally  dis- 
tribute themselves  into  a  few  leading  classes,  and 


156 


INDIVIDUAL  DIFFERENCES 

the  application  of  a  just  law  to  each  case  would 
soon  be  obvious  and  easy." 

The  social  case  worker  of  today  deals  with  a 
more  varied  group — his  service  is  no  longer  re- 
stricted to  the  relatively  small  class  of  recipients 
of  charitable  relief,  but  even  within  that  re- 
stricted group  the  "application  of  a  just  law  to 
each"  has  proved,  after  forty  years  of  trial  and 
error,  to  be  anything  but  obvious  and  easy.  The 
fact  is  that  people  in  like  circumstances  are 
never  so  much  alike  as  they  appear  to  be.  Never- 
theless, that  mistaken  generalization  of  years  ago 
will  be  repeated  many  times,  though  in  varying 
forms,  in  the  years  immediately  ahead  of  us.  For 
this  reason  the  subject  needs  to  be  emphasized. 

The  problem  now,  however,  is  not  so  much  one 
of  demonstrating  the  need  of  differential  social 
treatment  as  of  developing  the  special  social 
skill  which  it  demands  and  of  multiplying  the 
trained  minds  and  hands  needed  to  make  such 
treatment  a  reality.  There  is  danger  that  in  pub- 
lic departments  and  in  many  other  places  the 
task  of  social  case  work  will  come  more  rapidly 
than  the  essential  skill  which  it  requires;  in 
157 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

which  case  there  will  be  more  motions — many 
more,  and  little  accomplished. 

Success  in  the  particular  form  of  endeavor 
known  as  social  case  work  demands  a  high  degree 
of  sensitiveness  to  the  unique  quality  in  each 
human  being.  An  instinctive  reverence  for  per- 
sonality, more  especially  for  the  personality  least 
like  his  own,  must  be  part  of  a  case  worker's 
native  endowment.  To  set  up  any  one  pattern 
of  excellence  and  require  conformity  to  it  is  not 
his  aim.  It  is  his  privilege,  rather,  to  discover 
and  release  the  unduplicated  excellence  in  each 
individual — to  care  profoundly  for  the  infinitely 
varied  pattern  of  humanity  and  to  strive,  with  an 
artist's  striving,  to  develop  the  depth  and  rich- 
ness of  its  color  tones. 


158 


VII 

THE  BASIS  OF  PURPOSEFUL  ACTION 

T)ROBABLY  the  most  important  single  re- 
**-  striction  put  upon  social  work  of  any  kind  is 
the  delimiting  fact  that  w^canjiojLlreaLeeople, 
individually  or  uxgrnnps,  as  if  thpy  were  -depen- 
dent  and  domesticable  animals  without  crippling 
them.  Governments  and  legislatures  to  the  con- 
trary, it  is  not  possible  to  play  special  Provi- 
dence to  any  particular  group  of  people  without 
handicapping  them  cruelly.  This  applies  not 
merely  to  the  relation  of  the  social  worker  to  his 
clients,  of  the  statesman  to  his  constituents,  it 
applies  to  social  relations  of  every  kind.*  I  have 
dwelt  upon  the  formative  power  of  such  relations, 

*  In  so  far  as  social  insurance  applies  to  every  one  instead 
of  to  a  particular  group — to  a  group  of  people  qualifying  on 
the  basis  of  destitution,  for  example — my  argument  does 
not  hold.  The  gradual  establishment  of  reasonable  mini- 
mum standards  for  all  the  people  is  one  way  of  equalizing 
opportunity  without  ignoring  differences. 

159 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

but  that  power  can  be  exerted  in  opposite  ways — 
it  may  develop  personality  or  it  may  cripple  it. 
Consider  the  relation  between  parent  and 
child,  or  teacher  and  pupil,  or  doctor  and  pa- 
tient, or  friend  and  friend.  (The  first  and  most 
difficult  lesson  of  parenthood  is  to  acquire  proper 
respect  for  the  developing  personality  of  the 
child.  YThat  personality  is  devastated,  too  often, 
by  a  parental  affection  which  cannot  refrain 
from  dominating  and  protecting  at  those  very 
points  at  which  the  growing  mind  should  be  en- 
couraged to  find  its  way  out  by  conquering  its 
own  difficulty.  The  converse  is  true  also.  Who 
has  not  seen  parents  made  old  before  their  time, 
so  padded  about  were  they  by  the  anxious  and 
fussy  affection  of  their  sons  and  daughters?  In 
teaching,  of  course,  the  ability  to  release  the 
unique  individuality  of  the  taught  keeps  step 
with  whatever  is  best  in  modern  education.  The 
genuine  teacher  seeks  to  train  not  disciples  but 
observers.  So  with  the  doctor;  at  his  best  he, 
too,  is  a  teacher  who  helps  the  sick  to  heal  them- 
selves. As  between  friends  the  same  truth  holds. 
All  of  which  is  obvious  enough,  save  that  in  the 
160 


THE  BASIS  OF  PURPOSEFUL  ACTION 

service  of  any  particularly  unfortunate  one  we 
always  have  to  remind  ourselves  that  it  is  so. 
The  intolerable  character  of  the  handicaps  under 
which  our  human  kind  are  often  found  to  be  suf- 
fering, and  the  realization  of  this  intolerableness 
which  some  of  the  contacts  of  case  work  bring, 
may  betray  the  case  worker  into  adding  one 
more  handicap  to  all  the  rest;  namely,  the 
handicap  of  an  unnerving  pity. 

Those  who  have  done  most  to  improve  the  con- 
dition of  the  blind  and  to  prevent  blindness,  tell 
us  that  the  instinctive  and  pitying  reaction  of 
family,  friends,  and  general  public  is  the  greatest 
single  handicap  that  the  blind  have  to  contend 
with.  Two  who  have  borne  such  witness,  blind 
themselves,  are  Dr.  F.  J.  Campbell  and  Sir 
Arthur  Pearson: 

When  I  lost  my  sight,  I  was  between  four  and  five  years 
of  age.  My  father  said  to  the  other  members  of  the  fam- 
ily, "You  must  do  everything  for  him."  My  mother  took 
me  by  the  hand,  led  me  into  another  room,  and  said, 
"Joseph,  you  can  learn  to  work  as  well  as  the  other  chil- 
dren, and  I  will  teach  you."  ....  I  love  and  re- 
vere the  memory  of  that  mother,  who  encouraged  her 
blind  boy  to  do  his  full  share  of  the  work  and  have  his 

"  161 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

full  share  of  the  fun.  To  the  courage  and  independence 
gained  during  those  twelve  years  on  a  mountain  farm  in 
Tennessee  I  owe  chiefly  whatever  I  have  accomplished 
in  after  life.* 

It  seemed  to  me  that  blind  people  had  in  the  past 
been  generally  treated  entirely  in  the  wrong  manner. 
Sweet  kindly  folk  had  talked  to  them  about  their  afflic- 
tion and  the  terrible  difficulties  that  beset  them.  If 
you  tell  a  man  often  enough  that  he  is  afflicted,  he  will 
become  afflicted  and  will  adopt  the  mental  and  physical 
attitude  befitting  that  soul-destroying  word. 

....  When  I  found  my  sight  was  doomed  I  arrived 
at  various  decisions  of  greater  or  lesser  importance,  and 
one  of  the  lesser  ones  was  that  I  had  better  dispense  with 
the  services  of  the  personal  attendant  who  had  looked 
after  me  for  many  years,  as  otherwise  he  would  probably 
become  a  stumbling-block  in  the  path  of  blind  proficiency. 
The  great  secret  of  success  in  learning  to  be  blind  is  to  in- 
sist upon  doing  everything  possible  for  oneself. f 

New  light  is  thrown  upon  this  fundamental 
principle  of  social  treatment  by  psychologists  in 
the  analyses  of  animal  and  human  behavior. 
"The  peculiar  feature  of  the  life  of  animals,"  says 
Stout,  "which  prevents  progressive  develop- 
ment, is  the  existence  of  instincts,  which  do  for 

*  Campbell,  Dr.  F.  J. :    Outlook  for  the  Blind,  Vol.  I,  p.  99. 
f  Pearson,  Sir  Arthur:  Victory  over  Blindness,  pp.  15  and 
71.    New  York,^Doran,  19 19. 

162 


THE  BASIS  OF  PURPOSEFUL  ACTION 

them  what  the  human  being  must  do  for  him- 
self."* 

There  is  no  compelling  reason  why  one  should 
refrain  from  becoming  a  special  Providence  to  an 
animal  (always  provided  one  sees  it  through  its 
disabilities  and  does  not  drop  it  in  the  ditch  when 
one  grows  tired  of  being  kind),  but  there  is  every 
reason  why  we  cannot  treat  a  human  being  in 
this  fashion.  In  fact,  social  workers,  like  those 
who  seek  to  serve  their  fellows  in  any  other  way 
more  or  less  skilled,  should  be  pretty  humble- 
minded  about  their  calling,  for  the  plain  truth  is  } 
that  what  aman  does ^  fojrjiiin^ejfjxujiits^ar  moreO 

tn-^rrjjTJg^pprrnanpnf-  wpll-hpingufchnn  tho  things  ( 
that  aredonft  for  him. 

Thereason  for  this  will  be  found  in  an  examina- 
tion of  the  way  that  men's  minds  work.    The  , 
baby  seems  to  have  an  equipment  far  less  ade-    v 
quate  to  its  needs  than  that  of  the  kitten,  the    \ 
puppy  or  any  other  young  animal,  and  his  mental 
development  is  far  slower.    The  relatively  auto- 

*  Quoted  by  Mrs.  Bernard  Bosanquet  in  The  Standard 
of  Life,  p.  118  (Macmillan  and  Company),  to  which  book 
I  am  also  indebted  for  some  of  the  deductions  that  follow. 

163 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

matic  responses  of  the  animal  to  outside  stimuli 
follow  well- worn  paths  and  are  what  are  known 
as  instinctive  responses.  This  means  that,  with 
the  animal,  mental  progress  is  always  within  a 
circle  which  so  circumscribes  him  that  he  is 
incapable  of  acquiring  progressive  and  higher 
wants.  With  man  there  is  no  such  circle;  it  is 
replaced  by  a  spiral.  His  response  is  so  much 
slower  because,  very  early  in  his  career,  he  is 
forced  by  sheer  pressure  of  need  to  compare  one 
concept  with  another  and  to  deduce  a  third — in 
other  words,  to  reason.  The  reasoning  and  the 
habit-forming  processes  lead  him  out  of  any  nar- 
row circle  of  instinctive  responses  into  an  ever- 
widening  spiral  of  new  combinations  which  en- 
large his  horizon  and  render  him  capable  of 
communion  with  both  the  seen  and  the  unseen. 
The  difference  between  the  circle  and  the  spiral 
is  the  difference  between  routine  and  purposeful 
action,  between  the  domestic  animal  and  the 
pioneer  discoverer.* 

*  As  regards  instincts  versus  habits,  note,  for  example, 
this  passage  from  Watson's  Psychology  from  the  Stand- 
point of  a  Behaviorist,  p.  254  (Lippincott  Company,  1919): 

"No  fair-minded  scientific  observer  of  instincts  in  man 

164 


THE  BASIS  OF  PURPOSEFUL  ACTION 

It  is  true  that  a  man  can  become  so  weighed 
down  by  unfavorable  conditions — by  ill-health,    i 
unfair  dealing,  lack  of  opportunity — that  it  is 
impossible  for  him  to  want  progressively.    Under 
these  circumstances  an  estimate  of  his  native 

should  claim  that  the  genus  homo  possesses  anything  like 
the  picturesque  instinctive  repertoire  of  the  animal, 
.  .  .  Instinct  and  the  capacity  to  form  habits,  while 
related  functions,  are  present  in  any  animal  in  inverse  ra- 
tio. Man  excels  in  his  habit-forming  capacities.  So  quickly 
are  habits  formed  upon  the  basis  of  whatever  instinctive 
activity  is  present,  that  man  is  usually  accredited  with  as 
long  a  list  of  instincts  as  the  animals." 

Or  take  the  following  passage  from  Arthur  George 
Heath's  The  Moral  and  Social  Significance  of  the  Con- 
ception of  Personality,  p.  II  (Oxford,  Clarendon  Press, 
1921): 

"Not  merely  to  be  a  self,  but  to  have  a  developed  con- 
sciousness of  self:  to  realize  definitely  the  existence  of  our 
outer  world  against  which  the  self  acts  and  reacts:  to  form 
deliberate  plans  in  which  memory  serves  to  guide,  and 
rational  criticism  to  control  the  will;  powers  such  as  these 
would  seem  inseparable  from  personality,  and  yet  it  appears 
very  doubtful  whether  such  autonomy  of  interest  and  pur- 
pose against  the  surrounding  world  is  realized  in  the  life 
of  any  animal  but  man  himself." 

Nothing  said  here,  however,  should  be  interpreted  to 
mean  that  a  great  leap  was  made  as  between  man's  mind 
and  that  of  the  other  animals.  The  differences  have  come 
not  by  leaps  but  by  a  very  long  series  of  short  steps. 

165 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

powers  or  future  possibilities  which  does  not  take 
the  circumstances  into  account  can  be  as  unfair 
as  a  judgment  on  the  thrift  of  a  plant  that  has 
always  been  kept  in  the  dark.  Here  the  removal 
of  obstacles  from  his  path,  a  changing  of  the  op- 
pressive condition,  is  a  most  important  part  of 
advance,  but  an  equally  important  part  is  stimu- 
lation of  wants — of  wants  that  his  own  exertions 
alone  can  supply. 

Sympathy  in  the  case  worker  musl-be-made  to 
breed  ^nmpthinc  better  thnn  ^elf-pity  in  his 
clients.  The  remark  of  a  volunteer  engaged  in 
war  service  has  been  reported  to  be,  "I  do  like 
the  So-and-so's;  they'll  do  anything  that  I  tell 
them  to  do!"  This  is  not  the  social  worker's 
ideal  of  helpful  relations.  It  is  true  that  he  must 
often  use  reiteration  with  patience  and  persist- 
ence in  such  situations  as  Winifred  Jones's,  where 
the  level  of  possible  participation  on  her  part 
had  yet  to  be  discovered  and  allowed  for.  This 
is  very  different,  however,  from  becoming  a  spe- 
cial Providence  to  one's  client.  [The  true  case 
work  attitude  takes  full  account  of  man's  great- 
est asset — the  asset  which  distinguishes  him 
1 66 


THE  BASIS  OF  PURPOSEFUL  ACTION 

from  all  other  animals,  in  that  he  can  acquire  pro- 
gressive and  higher  wants  and  they  cannot]  He 
can  acquire  these,  the  case  worker  realizes^  only 
through  action  which  is  not  automatic  but  pur- 
poseful. To  step  between  a  man  and  the  spur  to 
purposeful  action  is  to  do  something  a  good  deal 
worse  to  him  than  what  we  meant  when  we  used 
to  talk  about  the  danger  of  "pauperizing"  him. 
That  term  had  always  a  materialistic  slant. 
What  we  really  were  in  danger  of  doing  was  not 
merely  pushing  him  down  by  the  careless  giving 
of  alms,  but  cutting  him  off  from  further  social 
development  at  some  one  or  more  points.  This 
danger  has  never  been  confined  to  the  giving  of 
material  relief ;  many  who  have  never  lacked  for 
material  things  as  well  as  the  destitute  have  been 
exposed  to  the  more  subtle  dangers  of  other  forms 
of  service — to  all  forms,  that  is,  which  are  with- 
out reverence  for  the  recipient's  own  powers  and 
latent  possibilities.  Nevertheless,  the  two  errors 
are  closely  related ;  unwise  relief-giving  and  un- 
wise service  can  be  ill  distinguished  in  the  fol- 
lowing illustration,  for  example: 

A  stranger  to  me,  a  former  teacher  who  had 
167 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

become  one  of  the  visitors  of  a  large  relief  soci- 
ety, sought  my  advice  a  few  years  ago  about  her 
new  work.  She  appeared  to  have  entered  upon 
it  in  a  genuine  spirit  of  service,  but  had  been 
shocked  and  disillusioned  by  what  seemed  to  her 
the  effect  of  relief  upon  the  families  she  had 
visited.  Was  it  true  that  relief  was  an  evil  al- 
ways? Did  it  lead  inevitably  to  the  cringing,  un- 
erect  attitude  that  she  had  observed?  She  was 
unable  to  imagine  any  effective  future  for  the 
work  with  which  she  was  identified,  or  to  dis- 
cover any  good  result  in  its  present  activities, 
other  than  a  merely  temporary  material  benefit. 
When  a  concrete  instance  of  the  harm  that  my 
questioner  referred  to  was  demanded,  she  cited 
the  case  of  a  father  and  mother  with  one  child,  a 
boy  of  eleven.  The  father  was  so  hopelessly  in- 
valided that  the  mother  had  to  be  at  home  to 
care  for  him.  She  had  seemed  a  cheery,  self- 
helpful  person  at  first,  but  as  time  had  gone  on — 
under  the  influence,  apparently,  of  the  regular 
relief  that  was  so  much  needed — she  had  become 
more  and  more  complaining,  more  and  more 
grasping  and  disingenuous. 
1 68 


THE  BASIS  OF  PURPOSEFUL  ACTION 

Further  queries  revealed  that  this  puzzled 
visitor,  though  a  woman  of  more  than  ordinary 
thoughtfulness,  had  never  attempted  to  work 
out  with  the  mother  whom  she  was  helping  any 
real  plan  of  campaign  for  her  family.  What,  I 
asked,  were  the  relations  between  mother  and 
child?  They  were  affectionate  and  normal. 
What  of  the  boy's  school  record?  It  had  not 
been  inquired  into.  What  were  the  mother's 
own  plans  for  the  boy's  future?  The  visitor  did 
not  know. 

Note  here  the  power  of  an  occupational  inhibi- 
tion. This  teacher  must  have  known  far  better 
than  I  the  successive  steps  by  which  a  mother 
could  be  helped  to  help  her  boy  in  turn  to  be- 
come the  head  of  the  household  later  on  and  a 
good  citizen  besides;  but  my  questioner's  new 
task  had  been  mistakenly  labelled  "relief  only," 
and  accordingly  her  attention  had  been  fixed  too 
exclusively  upon  making  the  relief  adequate  to 
the  family's  immediate  needs.  If  her  own  esti- 
mate of  her  client's  character  was  the  correct  one, 
the  woman,  though  thrown  temporarily  out  of 
adjustment  by  her  misfortunes,  was  by  no  means 
169 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

socially  bankrupt.  On  the  contrary,  she  was  the 
mother  of  a  growing  boy  with  a  future  before 
him;  she  was  able  to  give  affection  and  to  com- 
mand it.  What  she  needed,  after  the  shock  and 
discouragement  of  her  recent  experiences,  was  a 
^  partnership  plan — a  program  of  participation 
]  would  be  a  better  description — in  which  she  and 
the  visitor  together  could  share  the  responsibility 
of  the  successive  steps  to  be  taken,  all  looking 
toward  assuring  the  future  success  of  her  home. 
In  other  words,  what  the  client  needed  was  an 
open  window,  an  outlook.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
this  was  what  the  agent  of  the  relief  society  most 
needed  too.  The  level  of  participation  adapted 
to  this  client's  capacity  should  have  been  dis- 
covered and  a  program  devised  to  fit  it.* 

*  I  have  hesitated  to  use  the  word  "motivation"  in  this 
and  the  earlier  examples  of  case  work  given  in  this  book 
because  the  psychologists  are  not  agreed  as  to  its  exact 
meaning,  but  here  at  least  we  have  an  illustration  of  the 
way  in  which  the  discovery  and  acceptance  of  a  motive 
must  precede  any  genuine  participation  by  the  client  in  the 
social  treatment.  "Motive"  is  defined  by  Baldwin  and 
Stout  as  "anything  whatsoever  which,  by  influencing  the 
will  of  a  sensitive  being,  is  supposed  to  serve  as  a  means  of 
determining  him  to  act,  or  voluntarily  to  forbear  to  act, 

170 


THE  BASIS  OF  PURPOSEFUL  ACTION 

As  regards  the  mother's  loss  of  morale:  Human 
beings  are  ill-fitted  to  play  a  passive  part;  in 
every  walk  of  life  they  deteriorate  under  it.  One 
test  of  the  success  of  any  social  treatment  is  the 
degree  to  which  all  the  persons  involved  in  it 
have  been  able,  to  the  limit  of  their  ability,  to 
take  an  active  part  in  achieving  the  desired  re- 
sult. It  is  perilously  easy  for  case  workers  to 
assume  a  rather  selfish,  autocratic  r61e,  to  occupy 
the  center  of  the  stage  in  performing  acts  of 
seeming  unselfishness  in  which  they  are  forcing 
others  to  do  all  the  receiving.  To  contrive  some- 
how to  give  that  mother  a  new  vision  of  her  im- 
portant share  in  mending  the  family  fortunes,  to 
supply  her  with  an  adequate  motive  (adequate  to 
her,  that  is)  for  doing  her  part,  puts  relief  in  its 
right  place — right  not  only  in  our  scheme  of 
things  but  in  hers.  For  all  of  us  it  becomes  a 
mere  tool — and  not  the  most  important  one  at 
that — in  the  development  of  personality.* 

upon  any  occasion."     (See  Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and 
Psychology,  edited  by  James  Mark  Baldwin.) 

*  Dr.  Felix  Adler,  in  An  Ethical  Philosophy  of  Life, 
describes  the  characteristics  of  egocentric  philanthropy,  of 

171 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

It  may  not  come  amiss  to  add  at  this  point  a 
few  words  about  material  relief,  for  the  subject  is 
one  upon  which  the  public  mind  vibrates  at  pres- 
ent between  attraction  and  repulsion.  Relief 
as  largess  is  so  hopelessly  undemocratic  that  its 
disgrace  attaches  to  giver  and  to  receiver — it 
curses  both.  But  at  the  very  time  that  the  pub- 
lic is  feeling  this  most  keenly,  it  is  turning  to  a 
wider  distribution  of  relief — the  same  thing  for 
everybody — as  a  sort  of  left-handed  substitute 
for  justice.  In  so  far  as  this  new  development 
puts  any  faith  in  the  beneficence  of  relief  only,  it 
is  going  to  be  as  unsatisfactory  in  result  as  the 

altruism,  and  finally  of  his  own  ethical  philosophy  which,  in 
a  word,  is  "so  to  act  as  to  elicit  the  unique  personality  in 
others"  and  thereby  in  oneself.  " Incontestably,  in  the 
attempt  to  change  others  we  are  compelled  to  try  to  change 
ourselves.  The  transformation  undergone  by  a  parent  in 
the  attempt  to  educate  his  child  is  an  obvious  instance." 
As  an  illustration  of  the  typical  error  of  altruism,  he  names 
the  wife  or  mother  "who  slaves  for  her  husband  or  children, 
obliterating  herself,  never  requiring  the  services  due  her  in 
return  and  the  respect  for  her  which  such  services  imply, 
degrading  herself,  and  thereby  injuring  the  moral  character 
of  those  whom  she  pampers."  Egocentric  self-sacrifice  is 
described  in  a  brilliant  passage  (p.  212  sq.)  too  long  to  be 
reproduced  here  but  well  worth  more  than  one  reading  by 
social  workers. 

172 


THE  BASIS  OF  PURPOSEFUL  ACTION 

charity  of  an  earlier  day;  ^relief  in  and  of  itself 
has  no  moral  qualities,  and  least  of  all  is  it  ca- 
pable of  achieving  the  quality  of  democracy.  Its 
right  place  is  a  subsidiary  one.  If-  the  main  plan 
of  action  adopted  in  any  given  case  of  personal 
maladjustment  is  sound  and  fits  the  true  situa- 
tion— if  it  is  based  upon  genuine  insight,  and  if, 
moreover,  the  interest  and  co-operation  of  the 
person  or  persons  most  concerned  have  somehow 
been  won — then  it  is  possible  to  ignore  the  popu- 
lar superstitions  against  relief  and  the  popular 
superstitions  in  its  favor.  The  process  of  under- 
standing a  client  and  of  developing,  in  conference 
with  him,  a  program  of  participation  is  in  essence 
a  democratic  process.  Patronage  has  no  place  in 
it,  nor  can  the  "same  thing  for  everybody"  ideal 
have  any  place. 

I  have  long  suspected  that  there  is  no  such 
specialty  in  social  work  as  the  specialty  of  relief- 
giving.  It  can  be  handled  generously  and  fear- 
lessly so  long  as  its  administrators  have  a  clear 
grasp  of  the  principles  that  underlie  social  case 
treatment  and  are  applying  these  in  their  daily 
work.  If  that  work  is  releasing  energy  in  chan- 
173 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

nels  which  will  develop  personality  in  their 
clients,  if  these  clients  are  beginning  to  acquire 
higher  wants  by  a  purposeful  action  which  is  in- 
creasingly self-directed,  if  they  are  not  being 
forced  into  any  one  pattern  but  are  achieving 
the  diversity  which  naturally  follows  upon  self- 
directed  activity,  and  if,  above  all,  they  are  be- 
coming more  closely  related  to  the  various  com- 
munity groups  to  which  each  naturally  belongs, 
then  we  need  not  worry  about  the^relief  side  of 
our  program  or  about  any  other  merely  secondary 
consideration. 


174 


VIII 

THE  HOME 

'T^URNING  from  the  more  abstract  considera- 
-*-  tions  of  these  other  intermediate  chapters, 
from  the  interdependence  of  men  and  their  strug- 
gle toward  self-expression  and  diversity,  it  is  now- 
time  to  discuss  the  readjustments  between  hu- 
man beings  and  their  social  environment  from  a 
quite  different  angle.  It  has  seemed  worth  while 
to  take  the  longest  view  that  I  could  of  case 
work  in  its  relation  to  future  social  develop- 
ments, but  strengthened  and  adjusted  social  rela- 
tions in  our  own  day  and  time  are  even  more 
worthy  of  attention.  Our  own  world  as  we  find 
it,  our  own  world  as  we  can  better  it,  is  the  only 
possible  gateway  to  a  better  future.  Within  the 
small  space  remaining  to  me,  therefore,  I  should 
like  to  pass  in  quick  review  some  of  the  concrete 
forms  of  social  case  work  in  present  use,  and  to 
consider  each  one  in  relation  to  certain  outstand- 
175 


x~ 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

ing  and  permanent  social  institutions.  These  are 
the  home,  the  school,  the  workshop,  the  hospital, 
and  the  court — a  list  which  could  be  somewhat 
extended.  Finally,  as  already  suggested,  no 
description  of  case  work,  not  even  so  brief  a  one, 
should  omit  some  account  of  the  interplay  of  all 
the  different  forms  of  social  work  with  one  an- 
other. This,  too,  must  precede  my  summing  up. 
For  purposes  of  definition  it  was  necessary  to 
narrow  the  application  of  the  term  "social  case 
work"  in  Chapter  IV  to  the  long-continued  and 
intensive  care  of  difficult  cases.  Let  me  now 
broaden  its  use  to  include  once  more  all  those  so- 
cially useful  adjustments  which  are  made  with 
and  for  individuals,  whether  or  not  they  lead 
directly  to  the  development  of  personality.  The 
intensive  case  work  about  which  I  have  been 
writing — the  type  which  directly  concerns  itself 
with  personality  in  its  social  relations — may  come 
to  bear  a  separate  name  in  time  (a  name  of  not 
more  than  one  word,  let  us  hope),  but  at  this 
stage  the  one  term  is  used  to  cover  all  genuinely 
social  services  for  individuals  dealt  with  one  by 
one. 

i76 


THE  HOME 

First,  the  home.  What  relation  does  case  work 
bear  to  the  life  of  the  present-day  family? 

I  have  spoken  before  of  the  embarrassments 
which  come  to  the  case  worker  owing  to  the  fact 
that  the  relationships  with  which  his  task  has  to 
deal  are  the  warp  and  woof  of  daily  life.  This  is 
especially  true  of  family  case  work  and  of  child 
welfare  work.  Every  aspect  is  a  personal  matter 
to  every  citizen.  One  who  examines  current  lit- 
erature and  the  periodical  and  newspaper  press 
for  discussions  not  only  of  marriage  and  divorce, 
but  of  parental  responsibility  and  other  phases  of 
family  life,  is  struck  by  the  personal  note.  People 
born  into  real  homes  and  privileged  to  have 
founded  real  ones  are  likely — safe  in  their  haven 
— to  assume  that  the  subject  of  family  life  is  too 
sacred  a  one  to  be  discussed.  On  the  other  hand, 
much  of  the  literature  of  revolt  against  the  family 
as  now  constituted  bears  internal  evidence  of  the 
unhappy  personal  experiences  of  the  individual 
critics.  Surely  the  questions  involved  are  too 
big,  they  have  roots  running  too  far  back,  to  be 
settled  by  personal  bias. 

Case  workers  have  their  predispositions  too,  no 
12  1 77 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

doubt,  based  largely  upon  the  kind  of  home  in 
which  they  grew  up,  but  those  who  care  most  for 
their  subject  and  their  task  learn  to  set  predis- 
positions aside,  or  at  least  to  make  allowance  for 
them  in  forming  a  judgment.  I  have  seldom 
known  a  thorough  case  worker  whose  views  about 
the  family,  whether  conservative  or  radical,  had 
not  been  considerably  modified  by  the  contacts 
of  his  work.  I  recall,  for  example,  the  remark  of 
a  woman  engaged  in  case  work  on  the  west  side 
in  New  York  soon  after  taking  post-graduate 
work  in  sociology  at  a  woman's  college.  "When 
I  was  in  college,"  she  explained,  "I  belonged  to 
the  group  of  extreme  feminists  who  accepted 
Cicely  Hamilton's  views  and  had  no  use  for 
family  life;  but  over  here  on  the  west  side  I  find 
that  my  theories  do  not  fit  the  family  situations 
with  which  I  am  confronted.  I  am  coming  to  see 
that,  when  the  world  is  remade,  something  more 
than  the  experiences  of  a  small  coterie  of  intel- 
lectuals will  have  to  be  taken  into  account." 

There  is  an  attitude  toward  family  life  and  the 
home  which  is  so  exclusive  as  to  banish  all  larger 
forms  of  social  consciousness  from  consideration. 

i78 


THE  HOME 

We  have  only  to  remember  how  completely,  at 
certain  periods  of  history,  the  power  of  the  family 
has  overridden  the  power  of  the  state  to  under- 
stand that  the  interest  of  social  workers  in  the 
institution  of  the  home  should  not  be  in  the  in- 
stitution for  its  own  sake  but  for  the  sake  of 
the  individual  and  of  society.  They  must  learn 
to  recognize  in  any  given  home  which  is  in 
need  of  their  services  certain  potential  sources  of 
strength  and  probable  sources  of  weakness.  To 
what  extent  is  this  home  a  product  of  bad  social 
conditions  which  need  to  be  remedied  by  mass 
action?  Or  to  what  extent  is  it  markedly  anti- 
social and  a  source  of  contagion?  Are  its  mem- 
bers bound  in  subjection  to  the  strongest  of  the 
family  group  or  is  each  one  encouraged  to  develop 
initiative?  It  is  easier  to  ask  these  questions  than 
to  answer  them ;  the  answer  was  not  easy  in  the 
case  of  George  Foster's  parents,  probably,  or  in 
Clara  Vansca's  demoralized  household,  or  in 
Winifred  Jones's.*  One  difficulty  is  that  when 
the  clients  of  social  workers  live  in  families  they 
are  so  accessible  to  visitors.  Many  people  come 
*  See  Chapters  II  and  III. 
179 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

and  go  on  one  social  work  errand  or  another,  each 
one  influencing  to  some  extent  the  life  of  the  fam- 
ily as  a  whole,  though  often  doing  this  quite  un- 
consciously. This  difficulty  is  referred  to  in  an 
imaginary  dialogue  written  by  a  case  worker,  in 
which  "Jane,"  a  beginner  in  social  work,  replies 
to  her  friend,  "the  Philanthropist." 

"I  understand.  You  mean  that  in  a  few  years  the 
specialized  agencies  will  have  entirely  decentralized  the 
family — the  truant  officer  will  deal  with  the  boy,  the 
friendly  society  with  the  girl,  the  child  hygienist  with  the 
child,  and  the  baby  welfare  with  the  baby;  the  different 
nurses  will  have  visiting  days,  while  the  industrial  clinic 
will  follow  up  the  man.  There  will  be  psychiatric  special- 
ists for  middle  and  old  age  and  a  budget  specialist  for  re- 
lief.  Everyone  will  have  a  different  plan  for  the  family — " 

"Dear  me,  what  a  lot  of  specialized  persons  there  seem 
to  be,"  said  the  Philanthropist.  There  was  a  pause. 
"What  are  you  thinking  about  now?"  he  asked. 

"Oh,  I  was  just  thinking  about  the  family,"  said  Jane. 

In  all  probability,  Jane  would  have  been  the 
last  person  to  wish  to  see  any  of  these  specialties 
abolished,  but  the  specialists,  in  so  far  as  they  are 
dealing  either  with  families  or  members  of  fam- 
ilies, should  know  a  good  deal  about  the  facts  of 
family  life  and  should  keep  this  knowledge  in 
1 80 


i 


THE  HOME 

mind  in  all  their  work.  Without  attempting  to 
dogmatize,  I  should  like  to  inquire  what  some  of 
these  facts  are. 

I  am  aware,  of  course,  that  many  regard  the 
family  as  an  outworn  social  institution,  incapable 
of  further  adjustment  to  the  present  needs  of 
society.  Those  who  lead  well-protected  lives 
scarcely  realize  how  many  "homeless"  people 
there  are  in  the  world  today — homeless  in  the 
sense  that  they  have  lost,  or  never  had,  "the 
background  of  the  hearthstone."  But  none  of 
the  proposed  substitutes  for  this  background,  in 
so  far  as  they  have  been  tried,  seem  to  work  very 
well.  All  question  of  legal  sanctions  aside,  it 
would  seem  that  children  have  ^a— right  to  two 
parents  and  that  thevJiave-arTfght  to  them  per- 
manently. Unless  these  parents  are  able  to  main- 
tain a  genuine  partnership,  their  children  suffer 
cruel  loss.  Speaking  broadly,  children  do  not 
prosper  without  fathers  and  mothers  who  love 
them  and  love  one  another.  If  this  is  true,  then 
we  have  a  certain  definite  goal  to  work  toward,  no 
matter  how  far  the  institution  of  marriage  may 
now  lag  behind. 

181 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

A  colleague  says  that  much  of  the  disturbance 
in  family  life  today  is  due  to  the  struggle  within 
the  family  for  greater  democracy.  She  quotes 
Professor  Tufts,  "Democracy  in  national  life 
steadies  as  it  grows  older.  So  will  democracy  in 
family  life."  I  heartily  agree,  but  we  must  al- 
ways remember  that  democracy  in  the  family  is 
not  possible  if  either  husband  or  wife  is  markedly 
abnormal.  The  marriage  of  the  unfit  will  con- 
tinue to  perpetuate  either  anarchy  or  autocracy 
within  the  family  until  a  way  of  preventing  such 
marriage  is  found. 

Nowhere  in  the  field  of  public  administration  is 
the  state  treating  unequal  things  with  a  blinder 
equality  than  in  its  enforcement  of  our  present 
marriage  laws — diverse  it  is  true,  but  not  ra- 
tionally so.  Thoughtful  people  agree  that,  while 
marriage  should  be  made  easy  for  all  who  are 
competent  to  found  real  homes,  there  should  be 
proper  safeguards  against  the  marriage  of  those 
too  young  to  marry,  of  those  who  are  being 
coerced  into  marriage,  and  of  those  who  will  in- 
evitably or  even  probably  communicate  or  trans- 


182 


THE  HOME 

mit  disease  or  mental  defect  through  marriage.* 
The  social  casej&orkexsjof  the  country  shouM  not 
only  kqojK  ™ir  pres^f  marriage  laws  and  their 
lacks,  but  should  realize  the  supreme^imftort- 
ance  of  the  way  in  which  these  laws,  are*admin- 
istered.  Practical  adaptation  of  the  intent  of 
the  law  to  the  individual  circumstances  will 
probably  have  to  develop  certain  case  work 
features  in  time.f 

Clashes  of  tastes  and  ambitions,  varying  re- 
sponses to  sudden  external  change,  refusal  to 
abandon  an  outgrown  adjustment — all  these  play 
their  part  in  marital  unhappiness.  The  mere 
lack  of  flexibility  is  a  fruitful  source  of  trouble 
and  one  which  always  brings  to  my  mind  George 
Meredith's  description  of  a  married  pair: 


*  For  necessary  modifications  of  this  too  briefly  expressed 
principle,  see  "The  Right  to  Marry"  by  Dr.  Adolf  Meyer  in 
The  Survey  for  June  3,  1916. 

t  As  an  illustration  of  the  close  relation  between  social 
case  wdrk  and  social  reform,  it  may  be  mentioned  in  passing 
that  the  studies  made  by  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation,  first 
of  American  Marriage  Laws  and  now  of  marriage  law  ad- 
ministration (this  latter  still  in  process),  have  grown 
directly  out  of  my  relations  with  family  case  work. 

'  183 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Lovers  beneath  the  singing  sky  of  May 

They  wandered  once;  clear  as  the  dew  on  flowers: 

But  they  fed  not  on  the  advancing  hours: 

Their  hearts  held  cravings  for  the  buried  day. 

To  resist  change  and  fail  of  adjustment  to  it  is 
to  lose  everything  in  a  human  relation  that  is 
best  worth  keeping.  There  can  be  no  per- 
manence, that  is,  with  the  extreme  of  rigidity. 
This  law  of  growth  by  modification  can  be  mis- 
applied, of  course,  in  discussions  of  the  family. 
Dr.  Felix  Adler  makes  a  very  noble  application  of 
it  to  the  family  threshold,  to  marriage  itself, 
when  he  maintains  that,  instead-iiL-marcying 
with  the  full  determination  to  have  our  own  way 
more  than  ever,  we  should  accept  marriage  as  the 
greatest  opportunity  which  will  ever  come  to  us 
to  subject  ourselves  to  modifying  influences.* 
Education  for  marriage  is  probably  the  most  neg- 
lected part  of  the  whole  social  program  of  our 
time.  As  Professor  Ross  says,  we  must  learn  "to 
make  the  social  atmosphere  frosty  toward  foolish 
and  frivolous  ideals  of  marriage,"  and  must  fix 

*  Adler,  Felix:   Marriage  and  Divorce,  p.  35  sq.    New 
York,  McClure,  1905. 

184 


THE  HOME 

sound  ideals  of  marriage  and  the  family  "every- 
where in  social  tradition,  so  that  the  young  shall 
meet  them  at  every  turn."*  The  content  of  this 
teaching  will  have  to  be  provided  in  part  by 
family  case  work  experience. 

In  many  of  the  foreign  families  in  America, 
especially  in  those  best  known  to  case  workers, 
autocracy  is  a  tradition.  Here  is  an  opportunity 
to  build  a  bridge  over  which  both  parents  and 
children  may  cross  to  democracy  without  loss  of 
family  solidarity,  as,  for  example,  in  the  Allegri 
family  situation  described  earlier.  We  hardly 
realize  the  demoralization  that  can  come  to  the 
family  in  America  solely  through  the  fact  that 
foreign  parents  suffer  the  full  shock  of  sudden 
change  in  a  new  environment  and  are  unable  to 
adapt  the  training  of  their  children  to  New 
World  institutions. 

One  case  worker  found  her  ingenuity  taxed  to  reconcile 
an  Italian  father's  social  conventions  with  American  ways 
of  restoring  a  dangerously  ill  girl  to  health.  An  operation 
was  needed  and  the  hospital  in  which  it  could  be  performed 
had  been  found.     But  no  entreaties  moved  the  father, 

*  Ross,  E.  A.:  Principles  of  Sociology,  p.  590.  New 
York,  Century  Co.,  1920. 

185 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

determined  that  his  child  should  not  leave  her  home.  At 
last  the  case  worker  discovered  that  he  regarded  a  young 
unmarried  woman  as  permanently  disgraced  who  spent  a 
night  away  from  the  protection  of  the  parental  roof.  The 
adaptation  made  was  an  arrangement  by  which  father 
could  accompany  daughter  to  the  hospital  and  stay  there 
long  enough  to  assure  her  restoration  to  health  without 
blasting  her  reputation. 

In  this  incomplete  enumeration  of  inequalities 
having  their  origin  within  the  home  we  have  to 
reckon  with  that  conflict  of  the  generations  which 
is  the  conflict  of  youth  in  taking  on  definite 
personal  relations  with  the  outside  world — re- 
lations independent  of  the  family.  Sometimes 
the  home  nest  has  been  so  over-protected  that 
the  nestlings  have  never  learned  to  fly.  This 
is  a  situation  now  much  dwelt  upon  by  the  men- 
tal hygienists.  Children  fail  to  grow  up  emo- 
tionally, they  do  not  develop  the  power  of  pur- 
poseful action  and  are  no  better,  on  some  sides, 
than  the  domesticated  animals  to  which  refer- 
ence was  made  in  the  last  chapter.  In  other 
words,  their  homes  have  failed,  in  dealing  with 
these  younger  members,  to  reconcile  the  two  prin- 
ciples of  interdependence  and  of  purposeful,  inde- 
186 


i      THE  HOME 

pendent  action.  It  is  seldom  that  the  principles 
become  wholly  complementary  in  the  later  life  of 
one  in  whose  early  life  they  have  failed  of  recon- 
ciliation. But  the  other  side  of  the  picture  must 
not  be  ignored .  Warping  may  come  in  quite  other 
ways,  such  as  in  lack  of  sensitive  response  to  social 
obligations,  one  of  which  is  the  obligation  to  par- 
ents. There  are  few  more  appealing  figures  in 
imaginative  literature  than  the  widowed  father 
of  Arkady  and  the  old  parents  of  Bazarov  in 
Turgenev's  masterpiece,  Fathers  and  Children. 
Arkady,  it  will  be  remembered,  brings  back  from 
the  university  a  scorn  of  his  father's  favorite  poet, 
Pushkin,  which  he  does  not  hesitate  to  reiterate, 
and  Bazarov's  mother  must  give  him  her  blessing 
by  stealth,  so  emancipated  is  he. 

Of  course  we  have  to  reckon  with  the  fact  that 
not  everything  which  calls  itself  a  family  is  one. 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  a  "sham  family,"  and 
the  case  worker  must  learn  to  make  the  distinc- 
tion between  sham  and  real,  invidious  though  it 
seem,  if  he  is  to  face  his  task  with  courage. 
Something  more  than  the  mere  ceremony  which 
legalizes  a  relation  must  constitute  the  family 

i87 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

bond,  and  a  sham  family  is  one  in  which  this 
something  more  is  not  only  absent  but  lacking 
past  all  human  power  to  restore  or  create.  Where 
there  are  children,  the  test  is  this:  Can  the  chil- 
dren of  this  pair,  left  where  they  are,  grow  up  to 
be  decent  heads  of  families  later?  If  this  is  not 
either  probable  or  conceivable,  then  the  breeding 
place  of  contagion  and  social  disruption  must  be 
broken  up,  when  this  can  be  achieved  legally. 
The  breaking  up  will  be  in  the  interests  of  family 
life  and  in  no  sense  disregardful  of  its  claims. 
Probably  the  only  people  who  still  hold  that 
parental  rights  are  absolute  are  those  who  have 
never  seen  the  misery  and  injustice  which  the  ap- 
plication of  this  theory  can  manufacture.  They 
have  never  learned  from  experience  with  our 
courts  (though  there  has  been  some  real  improve- 
ment in  them)  that — right  for  right,  justice  for 
justice — parents  still  have  better  standing  in  the 
court  than  the  child  has. 

It  would  seem  that  the  preceding  catalogue  of 

difficulties  to  be  overcome  in  family  life  almost 

constitutes  an  indictment  of  the  family,  and 

makes  it  clear  that  man  could  better  get  his  first 

188 


THE  HOME 

lessons  in  individuality  and  sociality  somewhere 
else.  But  that  somewhere  else  has  not  been 
found.  One  who  has  observed  the  devastating 
effect  of  the  large  congregate  institution  or  of  the 
crowded  classroom  upon  the  personality  of  chil- 
dren begins  to  understand  somewhat  better  the 
relation  of  natural  ties,  of  affection  and  undivided 
attention  to  the  normal  development  of  the  hu- 
man being,  even  when  the  attention  is  relatively 
unskilled. 

If  it  were  possible  for  all  my  readers  to  know 
the  originals  of  the  case  records  from  which  I 
have  drawn  the  stories  given  earlier,  they  would 
realize  this  truth  even  more  fully.  Thus,  George 
Foster  bitterly  regretted  leaving  each  of  the  two 
free  homes  in  which  he  had  been  placed  before 
going  to  his  present  one.  He  had  the  normal v 
child's  passionate  desire  to  belong  to  some  one  in 
particular,  to  have  a  background  of  his  very  own. 
The  external  conditions  in  the  Winifred  Jones 
home  might  well  have  made  any  one  hesitate  to 
regard  it  as  a  good  home  for  small  children,  but  a 
lively  sense  of  the  available  alternatives  probably 
influenced  the  case  worker's  decision  to  keep  the 
189 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

home  together  as  long  as  possible,  and  gave  her 
an  added  reason  for  doing  everything  by  which  it 
could  become  a  better  one.  There  are  some 
things  that  cannot  be  turned  out  at  wholesale, 
and  a  man  or  woman  who  can  be  counted  an 
asset  to  society  is  one  of  them.  It  is  true  that  the 
school,  the  club,  the  workshop,  the  trade  or  pro- 
fessional organization,  and  organized  political 
activities  come  in  succession  to  exercise  those 
sides  of  character,  those  needs  of  contact,  of 
struggle  upon  equal  terms  with  one's  peers,  which 
the  family  cannot  supply;  but  the  protective  and 
benevolent  instincts  have  their  genesis  in  the 
home  and,  throughout  life,  this  cradle  of  loyalty 
and  of  service  supplies  a  trustworthy  measure 
for  man's  other  activities. 

I  believe  that  study  of  the  published  biog- 
raphies of  distinguished  men  and  women  would 
supplement  and  help  to  enrich  the  experience 
gained  of  home  life  by  social  workers,  many  of 
whom  are  likely  to  see  it  under  abnormal  condi- 
tions. Let  me  give  only  two  examples  of  what  I 
mean,  the  first  of  which  is  taken  from  the  Letters 
of  William  James.  It  throws  a  suggestive  light 
190 


THE  HOME 

upon  that  intimate  mingling  of  successive  genera- 
tions which  is  more  characteristic  of  the  home 
than  of  any  other  social  institution.  The  letter 
quoted  from  is  the  last  one  that  William  James, 
then  in  England,  wrote  to  his  father,  dangerously 
ill  in  this  country: 

In  that  mysterious  gulf  of  the  past  into  which  the  pres- 
ent soon  will  fall  and  go  back  and  back,  yours  is  still  the 
central  figure.  All  my  intellectual  life  I  derive  from  you; 
and  though  we  have  often  seemed  at  odds  in  the  expres- 
sion thereof,  I'm  sure  there's  a  harmony  somewhere,  and 
that  our  strivings  will  combine.  What  my  debt  to  you 
is  goes  beyond  all  my  power  of  estimating, — so  early, 
so  penetrating  and  so  constant  has  been  the  influ- 
ence.    .     .     . 

As  for  myself,  I  know  what  trouble  I've  given  you  at 
various  times  through  my  peculiarities;  and  as  my  own 
boys  grow  up,  I  shall  learn  more  and  more  of  the  kind  of 
trial  you  had  to  overcome  in  superintending  the  development 
of  a  creature  different  from  yourself,  for  whom  you  felt  re- 
sponsible. I  say  this  merely  to  show  how  my  sympathy 
with  you  is  likely  to  grow  much  livelier,  rather  than  to 
fade — and  not  for  the  sake  of  regrets.* 

My  second  example  from  biography  is  taken 

*  The  Letters  of  William  James.  Edited  by  his  son. 
Vol.  I,  p.  219  sq.  Boston,  The  Atlantic  Monthly  Press, 
1920.    The  italics  are  mine. 

191 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

from  the  Life  of  Pasteur.  It  seems  to  me  to  illus- 
trate not  only,  as  my  first  did,  the  bond  between 
the  generations,  the  continuity  of  family  life,  but 
to  show  how,  through  ties  of  affection,  the  widest 
ran^e  of  cultural  anajnrnents  can  be  held  to- 
gether in  relations  of  mutual  helpfulness  in  one 
small  home.  That  home,  a  little  tannery  in  the 
Jura,  not  far  from  the  Swiss  border,  consisted  of 
the  two  parents,  their  one  son  and  two  daughters. 
The  father  was  of  peasant  stock,  but  had  been 
one  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte's  soldiers.  It  was  a 
great  struggle  to  send  the  only  boy  away  to 
school,  and  through  the  lad's  intense  homesick- 
ness the  first  such  venture  failed.  When  at  last 
young  Pasteur's  studies  were  well  under  way,  he 
contrived  to  carry  the  home  folks  along;  then 
and  later  he  was  careful  to  see  that  each  member 
of  the  family  shared  in  the  intellectual  adventures 
of  the  student.  He  made  careful  drawings — 
large,  that  the  father  might  see  them  with  his 
failing  vision — of  the  crystal  formations  which 
were  his  first  important  discovery.  "Tell  me 
about  your  studies,"  wrote  the  elder  Pasteur, 
"about  your  doings  at  Barbet's.  Do  you  still 
192 


THE  HOME 

attend  M.  Pouillet's  lectures,  or  do  you  find  that 
one  science  hampers  another?  I  should  think 
not;  on  the  contrary,  one  should  be  a  help  to 
the  other."  The  principle  of  co-ordination  ap- 
plies not  to  science  alone,  as  this  shrewd  tanner 
in  the  hills,  with  mind  keyed  by  affection  to  its 
farthest  reach,  probably  conjectured.  It  applies 
to  the  family  as  well;  unity  in  diversity  helps. 
Years  after  these  parents  had  gone  to  their 
rest,  the  citizens  of  that  region  made  a  holiday 
and  dedicated  a  bronze  tablet  affixed  to  the  small 
house  in  which  Pasteur  was  born.  He  was  there, 
this  man  whose  work  in  chemistry  had  revolu- 
tionized the  scientific  thinking  of  Europe,  and  he 
was  deeply  moved.  I  cannot  better  illustrate  the 
relation  between  the  "first  practical  syllogism" 
of  father,  mother,  and  child,  and  the  life  of  the 
nation  or  of  the  still  larger  world  of  thought  and 
feeling,  than  by  quoting  Pasteur's  own  words  to 
his  old  neighbors  upon  that  occasion.  He  said  in 
part, 

Oh!  my  father,  my  mother,  dear  departed  ones,  who 
lived  so  humbly  in  this  little  house,  it  is  to  you  that  I 
owe  everything.     Thy   enthusiasm,  my   brave-hearted 

J3  193 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

mother,  thou  hast  instilled  it  into  me.  If  I  have  always 
associated  the  greatness  of  Science  with  the  greatness  of 
France,  it  is  because  I  was  impregnated  with  the  feelings 
which  thou  hast  inspired.  And  thou,  dearest  father, 
whose  life  was  as  hard  as  thy  hard  trade,  thou  hast  shown 
to  me  what  patience  and  protracted  effort  can  accomplish. 
It  is  to  thee  that  I  owe  perseverance  in  daily  work.  Not  only 
hadst  thou  the  qualities  which  go  to  make  a  useful  life,  but 
also  admiration  for  great  men  and  great  things.  To  look 
upwards,  learn  to  the  utmost,  to  seek  to  rise  ever  higher, 
such  was  thy  teaching.  I  can  see  thee  now,  after  a  hard 
day's  work,  reading  in  the  evening  some  story  of  the  bat- 
tles in  the  glorious  epoch  of  which  thou  wast  a  witness. 
Whilst  teaching  me  to  read,  thy  care  was  that  I  should 
learn  the  greatness  of  France. 

Be  ye  blessed,  my  dear  parents,  for  what  ye  have  been, 
and  may  the  homage  done  today  to  your  little  house  be 
yours!  * 

*  Vallery-Radot,  Rene:  The  Life  of  Pasteur,  Vol.  II, 
p.  155.    London,  Constable  and  Co.,  191 1. 


194 


IX 

SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— 
COURT 

T  HAPPEN  to  live  in  a  city  in  which  one  of  the 
A  leading  issues  of  several  successive  municipal 
campaigns  has  been  the  financing,  housing,  and 
general  administration  of  the  school  system.  The 
local  schools  are  charged  with  the  education  of 
more  than  900,000  children.  One  of  the  New 
York  newspapers  devoting  most  attention  to  edu- 
cational matters  comments  editorially:  "Our 
educational  system  was  planned  in  1898  by  au- 
thorities who  studied  the  subject  too  academic- 
ally. As  Matthew  Arnold  said  of  the  French 
schools,  at  a  given  hour  it  was  certain  that  every 
child  in  the  same  grade  was  opening  the  same 
text  to  the  same  page  and  memorizing  the  same 
facts."*  One  can  imagine  the  jealous  guardians 
of  our  democracy  laying  down  the  law  about  the 

*New  York  Evening  Post  for  October  13,  192 1. 
195 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

importance  in  America  of  doing  the  same  thing 
for  everybody  in  the  same  way  without  fear  and 
without  favor.  Gradually,  of  course,  there  have 
come  some  variations  of  method  for  the  phys- 
ically ailing,  for  the  backward,  for  training  the 
hands,  and  so  on,  with  the  result  that  a  much 
larger  proportion  of  all  the  children  now  pass  on 
from  the  elementary  to  the  secondary  schools. 
It  is  still  difficult,  however,  as  Miss  Abbott  re- 
ports of  Chicago  also,*  for  the  community  to 
realize  that  the  problems  of  the  school  are  not 
wholly  educational,  that  they  are,  in  part,  social. 
Behind  standard  measurements,  standard  cur- 
ricula, and  imposing  totals,  professional  conser- 
vatism has  been  well  entrenched  in  many  of  our 
school  systems,  and  it  was  not  until  1906  that  the 
first  tentative  introduction  of  social  case  work 
ideas  was  even  attempted.  These  ideas  and 
methods  were  introduced  by  home  and— school 
visitors,  or  visiting  teachers,  financed  at  first  by 
private  agencies  and  still  fostered  by  them,  but 

*  Abbott,  Edith,  and  Breckenridge,  S.  P.:  Truancy  and 
Non-Attendance  in  the  Chicago  Schools,  p.  227.  University 
of  Chicago  Press,  19 17. 

196 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

now  taken  over  in  part  by  the  school  administra- 
tions. The  new  venture,  as  one  educator  phrases 
it,  was  an  effort  "to  rescue  the  child  from  the 
children  and  the  teachers  from  the  school."  If 
ever  a  huge  problem  needed  to  be  separated  into 
its  constituent  parts  and  each  part  analyzed,  it 
was  the  problem  of  public  elementary  education 
in  this  country  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century. 

Even  now  the  visiting  teacher  movement  has 
made  no  more  than  an  encouraging  start.  It  is 
closely  related,  of  course,  to  medical  inspection 
and  mental  testing  in  the  schools,  to  vocational 
guidance,  and  to  the  various  other  individualizing 
aspects  of  school  work,  but  more  than  any  of  the 
others  it  occupies  that  strategic  ground  between 
home  and  school  over  which  there  is  still  no  well 
used  path.  There  are  five  school  hours  in  a 
child's  day  and  nineteen  other  hours;  obviously, 
a  valuable  approach  to  the  school  child  is  through 
his  social  relationships  in  those  out-of-school 
hours.  I  am  indebted,  for  the  most  part,  in  the 
brief  account  of  visiting  teaching  which  follows, 
to  a  pamphlet  recently  published  by  the  Public 
197 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Education  Association  of  New  York,  which  gives 
the  results  of  correspondence  with  60  visiting 
teachers  in  28  cities. 

A  visiting  teacher  is  a  social  worker,  preferably 
one  with  some  classroom  experience  of  teaching. 
She  undertakes,  for  a  given  number  of  pupils  re- 
ported to  her  by  the  school  for  poor  scholarship, 
bad  h pr  1th,  miscondnrt^lateness,  irregular  atten- 
dance, or  for  what  appear  to  be  adverse  home 
conditions,  to  discover  the  causal  factors  in  the 
difficulty  and  then  tries  to  work  out  a  better  ad- 
justment. It  is  not  astonishing  to  find  that, 
among  the  measures  she  most  frequently  em- 
ploys, are  the  exercising  of  personal  influence, 
winning  the_co-opera£jon  of  parents,  seeking  the 
advice  and  assistance_oi_medical  and  mental  ex- 
perts, seekirj^the_ajgLof  the  various  social  agen- 
cies, utilizing  recreational  facilities,  and  changing 
the  child's  environment.  We  have  seen  repeat- 
edly that  these  are  the  measures  most  frequently 
used  by  all  social  case  workers.  "Change  of 
environment"  may  mean  a  change  outside  any 
school,  within  the  present  school,  or  to  another 
school.  Such  changes  within  the  present  school 
198 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

as  a  promotion,  a  demotion,  and  a  transfer  to  a 
special  class,  are  based  on  information  brought 
back  to  the  teachers  after  a  study  of  the  individ- 
ual child  in  his  neighborhood  environment  and  in 
that  of  his  home.  The  analysis  of  replies  to  in- 
quiries sent  out  shows  that 

Even  in  schools  where  the  children  have  been  reclassi- 
fied on  the  basis  of  mentality,  visiting  teachers  report 
having  found  children  whose  scholastic  attainments  did 
not  tally  with  their  intelligence  quotients,  and  whose 
"physical  condition,"  "  out-of -school  influences,"  "family 
history,"  "  character  disabilities,"  etc.,  had  to  be  taken 
into  account  in  interpreting  their  failures.  Adjustment 
of  the  adverse  home  conditions,  whatever  they  were,  re- 
sulted in  bringing  these  children  up  in  lessons  to  the 
level  where  their  intelligence  showed  they  should  be. 
The  following  history  illustrates  this  type  of  child:  A  boy 
of  nine  with  an  intelligence  quotient  of  120  was  doing  very 
poor  work,  in  the  4th  grade.  The  visiting  teacher  found 
that  he  read  till  n  at  night  "any  books  he  found  in  the 
library."  He  rarely  went  out — "not  in  this  neighbor- 
hood!" The  visiting  teacher  correlated  his  reading  with 
his  lessons;  interested  him  in  outdoor  athletics;  and  with 
the  mother  worked  out  a  vigorous  daily  program  which 
left  him  at  night  physically  tired  and  mentally  satisfied, 
and  ready  to  retire  early.  Interest  and  oversight  brought 
this  child  up  to  the  standard  which  his  ability  warranted, 


199 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

and  in  addition  changed  him  from  a  dreamer  and  laggard 
into  an  energetic  boy  and  pupil.* 


There  is  one  discouraging  aspect  of  this  new 
development  in  social  case  work.  Those  engaged 
in  the  task,  some  under  public  auspices  and  some 
under  private,  are  often  overburdened  with  more 
work  than  they  can  possibly  do  well.  A  visiting 
teacher  who  has  to  deal  with  more  than  200  chil- 
dren a  year  is  not  doing  social  case  work  or  very 
much  else  of  a  socially  productive  character.  In 
many  school  Systems  the  annual  load  for  each 
worker  is  from  300  to  500,  and  some  report  a 
case-load  of  1,000.  Even  the  figure  of  200  chil- 
dren is  altogether  too  high;  if  the  work  is  to 
yield  needed  insights  and  to  make  its  full  con- 
tribution to  the  remolding  of  school  policies,  it 
might  well  be  cut  in  half.  As  it  is,  the  figures  sub- 
mitted in  the  report  published  by  the  Public 
Education  Association  show  that  in  some  of  the 


*  The  Visiting  Teacher  in  the  United  States,  p.  33  sq. 
A  Survey  by  the  National  Association  of  Visiting  Teachers 
and  Home  and  School  Visitors.  New  York,  Public  Educa- 
tion Association,  192 1. 

20O 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

28  cities  replying  to  inquiries  they  have  the  term 
"visiting  teaching"  without  the  service. 

No  one  of  the  organized  forms  of  social  life  can 
be  studied  save  against  a  background  of  all  the 
others.  Consider,  for  example,  the  network  of 
relations  existing  between  the  home  and  the 
workshop.  More  than  thirteen  years  ago,  at  a 
meeting  of  social  workers,  I  ventured  to  take  the 
position,  then  sharply  challenged,  that  all  the 
larger  adjustments  of  industry,  finance,  inter- 
national relations,  government  itself,  could  be 
tested  in  the  long  run  by  their  effect  upon  family 
life;  that  they  must  conform  finally  to  the  needs 
of  the  home  or  else  be  scrapped  or  reorganized.* 
Some  of  my  hearers  felt  that  tnese  other  social 
institutions  rather  than  the  family  were  likely  to 
be  the  winners  in  what  seemed  to  them  an  un- 
equal contest.  But  I  must  have  failed  to  make 
my  meaning  clear;  at  least,  I  have  seen  no  rea- 
son to  change  my  mind  on  this  point.  If,  for 
example,  the  railroad  trainman  cannot  see  his 

*  Proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  of  Charities 
and  Correction  (now  the  National  Conference  of  Social 
Work)  for  1908,  p.  77. 

201 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

children  often  enough  really  to  know  them  and 
for  them  to  know  him;  if  it  be  true  that  long 
working  hours,  or  low  wages,  or  sudden  transfers 
of  large  bodies  of  workmen  to  a  distant  point  are 
destructive  of  a  sound  family  life,  then  industry 
itself  cannot  fail  to  be  crippled  by  the  inevitable 
reaction  against  such  social  blindness,  and  a  re- 
organization of  industry  becomes  inevitable  if 
civilization  is  to  survive. 

It  is  possible,  of  course,  to  turn  this  illustration 
about  and  demonstrate  that  some  of  the  bases  of 
family  life  itself  had  their  roots  in  economic  and 
labor  conditions.  Thus  Vinogradoff,  in  his  brief 
review  of  tribal  law,  shows  how  often  both  tribal 
organization  and  marital  customs  were  shaped  by 
the  surrounding  physical  and  industrial  condi- 
tions.* The  two  views  are  not  irreconcilable; 
one  relates  to  origins,  the  other  to  possible  future 
developments. 

Mention  of  some  very  recently  organized  rela- 
tions between  industry  and  social  case  work  may 

*  Vinogradoff,  Sir  Paul:  Outlines  of  Historical  Juris- 
prudence, Vol.  I,  pp.  163-212.    Oxford  University  Press, 

202 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

suggest  what  certain  trends  in  industry  now  are. 
One  of  the  first  contacts  of  case  work  with  indus- 
try came  about  through  the  child  labor  cam- 
paigns, but  I  am  reserving  any  account  of  these 
and  of  some  other  relations  with  industry  for  a 
separate  chapter,  because  they  will  serve  to  illus- 
trate the  interplay  of  all  the  types  of  social  work 
in  effecting  certain  important  social  reforms. 

The  actual  entry  of  case  work  into  the  admin- 
istrative side  of  industry  is  very  recent.  Changes 
in  methods  of  production  which  account  for  this 
new  departure  were  indicated  by  the  late  Frank- 
lin K.  Lane  when  he  wrote,  at  the  end  of  his 
term  of  service  in  the  Department  of  the  Inter- 
ior, "We  are  quickly  passing  out  of  the  rough- 
and-ready  period  of  our  national  life,  in  which 
we  have  dealt  wholesale  with  men  and  things, 
into  a  period  of  more  intensive  development  in 
which  we  must  seek  to  find  the  special  qualities 
of  the  individual  unit,  whether  that  unit  be  an 
acre  of  desert,  a  barrel  of  oil,  a  mountain  canyon, 
the  flow  of  a  river,  or  the  capacity  of  the  humblest 
of  men." 

It  is  not  possible  to  dwell  here  upon  the  details 
203 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

of  "personnel  work,"  as  it  is  called,  but  it  should 
be  evident  that  not  only  this  service,  as  now 
developed  in  factories  and  workshops,  but  the 
specialized  division  of  it  which  has  to  do  with  the 
mental  hygiene  of  industrial  workers  will  have  to 
utilize  the  qualities  and  technique  which  belong 
to  the  social  case  worker. 

Another  interesting  application  of  case  work  to 
industrial  problems  is  in  the  workmen's  com- 
pensation field.  The  New  York  State  Industrial 
Commission  has  employed  two  trained  case 
workers  to  collect  the  social  facts  which  will  be 
helpful  to  the  Commission  in  making  individual 
decisions  about  cases  of  workmen's  compensa- 
tion. Their  services  also  include  such  tasks  as 
selecting  proper  guardians  (where  the  benefi- 
ciaries of  the  award  are  children),  following  up 
the  award  by  some  specialized  service  which  will 
render  the  compensation  more  effective  (securing 
training,  work  for  cripples,  medical  service,  and 
so  on) ,  and  making  connection  with  the  social  re- 
sources of  the  community  wherever  difficulties 
are  brought  to  light  with  which  the  Commission 
cannot  possibly  deal.  Miss  Frances  Perkins,  to 
?Q4 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

whom  the  state  owes  the  inauguration  of  this 
service,  gives  the  following  illustration,  among 
others,  of  its  value: 

The  father  of  the  Hogan  family  was  burned  to  death 
in  1 916.  The  mother  was  already  dead.  The  Com- 
mission at  that  time  had  the  children's  uncle,  Mr.  Craig, 
assume  the  guardianship  of  the  children  and  receive  the 
money  for  their  support.  Some  time  in  1920  it  was 
noted  that  Mr.  Craig  no  longer  signed  receipts  for  the 
money  and  a  letter  brought  the  response  from  Mrs. 
Craig  that  her  husband  was  not  home  and  that  she  was 
receiving  the  money  instead.  The  After-Care  Service 
was  later  asked  to  look  into  the  case,  chiefly  because 
the  Commissioner  remembered  the  unusual  beauty  and 
charm  of  the  Hogan  children  and  wondered  how  'they 
were  getting  along. 

The  family  was  found  living  in  wretched  surround- 
ings. Mr.  Craig  was  serving  a  five  years'  sentence  for 
"burglary.  Mrs.  Craig  was  doing  work  by  the  day  and 
Mary  Hogan  was  kept  out  of  school  to  care  for  the  small 
children.  Tom  Hogan,  the  eighteen-year-old  boy,  was 
found  to  be  badly  crippled  as  a  result  of  a  street  acci- 
dent, and  much  in ,  need  of  medical  care.  It  proved  to 
be  easy  to  secure  a  grant  from  the  widow's  pension  fund 
for  Mrs.  Craig  which,  with  the  Hogan  children's  com- 
pensation and  help  from  some  of  the  Hogan  relatives 
who  were  visited,  enabled  Mrs.  Craig  to  remain  at  home 
and  care  for  the  children.  Mary  Hogan  was  sent  to 
school,  Tom  was  placed  under  the  care  of  a  good  ortho- 

205 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

paedic  clinic  and  is  just  recovering  from  an  operation 
which  will  straighten  the  twisted  leg  to  nearly  normal. 
In  this  case  our  advice  to  the  Commission  was  to  con- 
tinue payments  for  the  children  in  the  Craig  home,  but 
it  was  only  after  considerable  work  that  conditions  were 
such  as  to  warrant  this  recommendation.* 

Probably  there  are  many  other  points  in- 
volving the  relation  of  the  economically  stronger 
to  the  economically  weaker  in  which  a  law,  how- 
ever well  drawn,  or  the  usual  routine  of  adminis- 
tration, however  orderly,  will  fall  short  of  achiev- 
ing essential  justice  unless  administration  can 
include  these  case  by  case  adjustments.  But  I 
pass  on  to  the  one  other  question  under  this  gen- 
eral heading  of  the  workshop  that  I  can  attempt 
even  to  mention;  namely,  rinding  work.  The 
phrases  "vocational  guidance"  and  "vocational 
education"  have  been  in  every  one's  mouth  this 
long  while,  but  the  actual  working  out  of  a 
sound  technique  of  procedure  looking  to  the  best 
welfare  of  each  individual  dealt  with  has  arrived 
very  slowly.    To  this  delay  may  be  traced  some 

*  Perkins,  Frances:  "An  Experiment  in  the  Application 
of  Case  Work  Methods  to  a  New  Problem,"  in  The  Family 
for  April,  192 1. 

206 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

of  the  serious  breakdowns  of  our  after- the-war 
vocational  program. 

The  public  employment  bureaus  of  the  war 
period,  necessary  as  they  were,  had  some  of  the 
same  drawbacks.  In  theory,  they  had  only  one 
task :  to  bring  together  the  man  in  need  of  work 
and  the  man  in  need  of  a  worker.  But  the  as- 
sumption that  these  two  parties  to  a  bargain 
meet  on  equal  terms  is  not  always  borne  out  by 
the  facts.  Here,  too,  in  time,  must  come  the 
social  adjustments  which  are  already  being  made 
in  some  of  the  juvenile  departments  of  state  em- 
ployment bureaus  where,  as  one  official  expresses 
it,  they  are  trying,  in  placing  a  young  person,  to 
take  into  account  the  applicant's  special  apti- 
tudes, training,  physique,  home  environment, 
and  personality.  After  placing  him,  they  are  also 
careful  to  get  some  idea  of  the  result  of  place- 
ment. No  employment  bureau  can  make  deci- 
sions for  either  worker  or  employer,  but  it  can 
strengthen  the  basis  of  decision  for  both  by 
putting  at  the  disposal  of  each  a  clearer  picture 
of  the  concrete  situation. 

This  is  not  the  place  in  which  to  attempt  a  de- 
207 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

tailed  account  of  social  case  work  in  periods  of  in- 
dustrial depression,  though  the  temporary  care  of 
the  unemployed  and  their  families  has  always 
been  a  case^work  burden  at  these  times,  and  the 
fact  of  unemployment  has  been  a  fruitful  cause  of 
other  maladjustments  demanding  social  treat- 
ment for  years  after  the  period  of  depression  was 
over.  Violent  fluctuations  between  times  of  great 
scarcity  of  workers  and  times  of  great  scarcity 
of  work  are  due  to  causes  over  which  the  social 
agencies  of  the  country  have  little  control. 
They  realize  this,  and  the  very  agencies  that 
have  done  most  to  mitigate  the  disastrous  effects 
of  hard  times  are  the  ones  that  have  most  per- 
sistently urged  preventive  measures  upon  gov- 
ernment and  upon  industry.  "When  people  are 
sick,"  to  quote  from  a  report  of  mine  written 
after  the  panic  of  1907-08,  "we  can  cure  them; 
when  they  are  bad,  we  can  try  to  reform  them; 
but  when  they  are  out  of  work  there  is  only  one 
effective  remedy  for  their  troubles  and  that  is 
real  work  at  real  wages." 

Certain  aspects  of  the  situation,  however,  will 
continue    to   need    the    technique   of   the   case 
208 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

worker.  In  an  earlier  chapter  mention  was 
made,  in  passing,  of  the  varied  types  of  the  un- 
employed and  of  the  importance  of  differentia- 
tion in  their  treatment.*  The  more  varied  and 
flexible  the  measures  taken  by  employers  and  by 
the  public,  the  more  surely  will  the  worst  evils 
of  business  cycles  disappear.  Meanwhile,  the 
social  agencies  are  far  from  being  indifferent  to 
the  tragedy  of  the  unemployed  man  or  woman. 
Such  remedial  measures  as  they  are  able  to  take 
they  do  take,  preserving  intact,  in  so  far  as  pos- 
sible, their  policy  of  diversified  service.  To  quote 
again  from  the  1908  report,  they  "make  a  loan 
to  one,  send  another  to  the  woody ard  to  work  for 
all  he  gets,  stave  off  the  landlord's  eviction  notice 
for  a  third,  find  a  chance  of  work  outside  for  a 
fourth,  place  the  fifth  in  a  hospital,  send  the 
sixth  and  his  whole  family  to  the  country,  pro- 
vide cash  for  the  exceptionally  provident  buyer 
who  is  the  seventh,  relieve  the  improvident 
eighth  sparingly  with  supplies  plus  a  work-test, 
and,  instead  of  doing  work  twice  over,  turn  the 

*See  Chapter  VI,  p.  154. 
14  209 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

ninth  over  to  the  charity  that  is  already  caring 
for  him." 

But,  just  as  after  a  public  disaster  all  disabili- 
ties are  in  danger  of  being  credited  to  the  earth- 
quake, or  flood,  or  fire,  so  in  a  time  of  industrial 
depression  social  agencies  are  in  danger  of  assum- 
ing that  their  clients  are  in  need  of  nothing  but 
employment,  when  in  fact  their  most  serious  mal- 
adjustments may  be  quite  other.  This  blindness 
of  the  preoccupied  might  have  wrecked  the  treat- 
ment of  Rupert  Young  and  his  family,  as  will  be 
explained  in  the  next  chapter.* 

I  have  just  been  discussing  a  failure  in  indus- 
trial organization  which  periodically  thrusts  upon 
social  case  work  the  handling  of  a  mass  problem 
with  which  it  is  ill  fitted  to  cope.  In  sharp  con- 
trast to  this  industrial  breakdown  is  the  strong 
organization  achieved  in  this  generation  by  medi- 
cine and  the  hospital.  Not  only  have  the  won- 
derful advances  of  medicine  and  surgery  and 
public  sanitation  supplied  the  family  agencies 
and  those  engaged  in  children's  social  work  with 

*See  p.  239  sq. 
210 


SCHOOI^-WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

a  whole  battery  of  new  resources,  but  they  have 
also  developed  within  the  hospital  itself  a  new 
and  most  valuable  adaptation  of  social  case  work 
to  the  needs  of  patients  in  the  dispensary  and  the 
wards. 

Social  service  in  the  hospital  had  its  begin- 
nings in  the  desire  of  forward-looking  physicians 
to  achieve  better  and  more  lasting  results.  They 
found  that  social  insights  strengthened  their 
diagnosis,  and  social  adjustments  their  therapy. 
Here,  in  medicine,  note  again  the  line  of  develop- 
ment to  which  I  have  called  attention  more  than 
once  in  other  connections:  first,  in  the  long,  slow 
progress  there  was  promiscuous  dosing,  then  a 
dogmatic  same-thing-for-everybody,  then  the 
more  or  less  scientific  classification  of  diseases  and 
a  standardized  treatment  for  each.  Now,  how-(Y 
ever,  socialized  medicine  begins  to  treat  not  only 
the  disease  but  the  patient  in  his  individual  en-  % 
vironment — a  marriage,  as  it  were,  of  medicine 
and  social  work.  Preventive  medicine  owes  its 
vitality  and  its  continuing  advance  not  only  to 
laboratory  experimentation  and  new  discoveries, 
but  to  the  application  of  such  discoveries  to  life, 

211 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

to  the  adaptations  and  new  problems  presented 
by  the  medical  clinician,  and  by  the  reports  of 
social  workers  upon  environmental  obstacles  and 
end  results. 

About  three  hundred  and  fifty  hospitals  in  the 
United  States  now  have  social  service  depart- 
ments. This  development  has  sometimes  out- 
stripped the  supply  of  competent  medical-social 
workers.  Progress  has  also  been  delayed,  in  some 
hospitals,  by  the  tendency  to  overload  the  social 
case  workers  with  administrative  duties  which 
could  be  as  well  performed  by  others.  But  all 
types  of  social  case  work  owe  a  great  debt  to 
modifications  in  method  worked  out  in  dispen- 
sary and  hospital  by  the  case  workers  there  who 
have  been  doing  their  work  under  new  conditions 
and  in  close  co-operation  with  the  highly  skilled 
practitioners  of  another  profession.  The  trained 
case  worker  interprets  the  community  to  the  hos- 
pital and  the  hospital  to  the  community.  In  the 
matter  of  hospital  admissions  and  discharges,  the 
social  worker  can  make  a  whole  series  of  adjust- 
ments that  are  time-saving  and  life-saving.    At 


212 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

the  same   time,   however,   Miss   Ida   Cannon's 
warning  should  be  heeded  when  she  says: 

At  present,  the  administrative  function  of  the  social 
worker  in  the  clinic  is  crowding  out  her  social  case  work. 
She  is  too  busy  to  get  into  the  homes,  to  keep  fresh  and 
clear  before  her  the  social  situation  in  the  background. 
Thus  she  becomes  an  institutionalized  person  and  loses 
the  biggest  contribution  she  has  to  give  to  the  hospital, 
that  of  never  thinking  in  routine,  of  keeping  fresh  always 
the  community's  and  patient's  point  of  view.* 

A  branch  of  medical-social  case  work  which 
has  developed  quite  rapidly  since  the  war  is  what 
is  known  as  psychiatric  social  work.  It  is  only 
when  such  social  work  is  undertaken  in  close  col- 
laboration with  a  thoroughly  competent  psy- 
chiatrist that  it  concerns  us  here.  The  value  of 
collaboration  must  be  apparent,  since,  in  the 
mental  field  even  more  than  in  the  physical,  thor- 
ough diagnosis  must  depend  in  part  upon  social 
evidence,  and  the  treatment  which  follows  is  so 

*  Cannon,  Ida  M.:  Address  before  the  American  Hos- 
pital Association,  October,  1920.  See  also  Miss  Cannon's 
book,  Social  Work  in  Hospitals,  of  which  a  revised  edition, 
to  be  published  by  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation,  is  now  in 
press. 

213 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

largely  a  matter  of  better  adjustment  to  the  en- 
vironment.* 

Probably  every  one  would  agree  that  tradition 
and  precedent  are  more  heavily  weighing  down 
and  clogging  the  daily  procedures  of  courts  than 
of  hospitals.  Both,  however,  are  under  the  con- 
trol of  long-established  professions,  and  to  the 
extent  that  these  professions  are  highly  organized 
and  class-conscious  the  social  worker  in  the  court 
or  hospital  is  often  at  a  certain  disadvantage.  It 
is  important,  therefore,  for  the  social  case  worker 
who  enters  hospital  or  court  service  to  be  thor- 
oughly well  grounded  in  the  principles  and  tech- 
nique of  social  work  in  advance.  "We  read,  in- 
deed," says  George  Eliot,  "that  the  walls  of 
Jericho  fell  down  before  the  sound  of  trumpets; 
but  we  nowhere  hear  that  those  trumpets  were 
hoarse  and  feeble." 

The  court  is  the  last  of  the  social  institutions 
that  I  can  here  consider,  and  by  court  I  must 
be  understood  to  mean  the  whole  machinery  of 
justice,  including  its  functions  of  interpretation 

*See  footnote,  p.  104. 
214 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

and  of  enforcement.  In  the  old  days  these  func- 
tions were  perverted  by  our  blind  desire  to  punish 
and  to  avenge.  Later  came  the  attempt  to  make 
the  punishment  fit  the  crime.  Now  we  are  only 
just  beginning  to  realize  that  we  should  make  the 
punishment  (the  treatment  rather)  fit  the  crimi- 
nal.   Dean  Roscoe  Pound  tells  us  that 

The  nineteenth  century  was  hostile  to  individualization 
and  to  administrative  discretion,  which  is  the  chief  agency 
of  individualization,  seeking  to  reduce  the  whole  adminis- 
tration of  justice  to  abstractly  just,  formal,  rigid  rules, 
mechanically  administered.  This  was  true  the  world  over. 
It  was  specially  true,  and  true  to  an  exaggerated  degree, 
in  America.  .  .  .  Hence,  we  got  rigid  detailed  pro- 
cedure and  hard-and-fast  schemes  of  penal  treatment,  lest 
prosecutor  or  court  or  prison  authorities  do  something 
spontaneous  in  view  of  the  exigencies  of  a  particular 
case.* 

Modern  courts  are  turning  to  certain  groups  of 
specialists  no  longer  as  expert  witnesses,  sum- 
moned by  the  prosecution  and  the  defense  to 
prove  that  black  is  not  so  black  and  white  not  so 
white  after  all,  but  as  disinterested  advisers  of 
the  court  itself,  serving  neither  side  of  the  con- 

*  Pound  and  Frankfurter:  Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland. 
Cleveland  Foundation,  1922.  ft 

215 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

troversy  or  cause  but  seeking  the  point  at  which 
the  best  interests  of  society  and  of  the  individuals 
involved  may  be  said  to  meet.  With  the  gradual 
development  of  probation,  of  the  suspended  sen- 
tence and  parole,  and  of  the  indeterminate-Sen- 
tence, there  has  come  the  opportunity  of  the 
physician,  the  psychologist,  the  psychiatrist,  and 
of  the  social  worker  to  suggest  different  things 
that  should  be  taken  into  consideration  in  judg- 
ing a  man,  and  certain  other  things  that  may  be 
done — different  things  for  different  people — in 
placing  his  life  under  the  temporary  guidance 
and  control  of  the  state. 

The  plan  of  juvenile  and  adult  probation  is 
probably  the  most  important  single  agency 
through  which  social  work  now  enters  the  courts. 
Juvenile  probation  originated  with  a  private 
child-helping  agency  in  the  '6o's,  but  even  now  its 
use  by  the  courts  is  far  from  being  thoroughly 
effective.  In  this  field  of  fixed  traditions  and 
formal  judgments  changes  come  slowly.  Thus, 
probation  is  still  used  in  some  courts  as  a  substi- 
tute for  an  unpopular  and  difficult  decision;  it  is 
still  used,  moreover,  in  cases  in  which  probation 
216 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

is  bound  to  be  ineffectual.*  It  follows  from  these 
misapplications  of  a  good  method  that  con- 
scientious probation  officers  are  burdened  with 
more  cases  than  they  can  possibly  treat  effec- 
tively, and  again  we  find  a  form  of  case  work 
laboring  under  the  disadvantage  of  unwieldy 
numbers.  This  is  very  far  from  being  universally 
true  in  the  probation  field,  where  some  excellent 
case  work  has  been  done,  but  it  is  truer  than  it 
should  be.  In  Maria  Bielowski's  story  is  re- 
corded the  good  work  of  a  probation  officer  who, 
it  will  be  remembered,  gathered  the  social  evi- 
dence in  the  case  before  sentence  was  pro- 
nounced. 

The  best  of  the  lawyers  and  judges  look  for- 
ward to  many  changes  in  court  procedure.  When 
I  was  preparing  the  manuscript  of  a  book  on 
Social  Diagnosis,  I  asked  a  well-known  authority 
on  the  law  of  evidence  to  read  and  criticize  some 
of  my  chapters.  He  was  good  enough  to  do  this, 
and  many  of  his  criticisms  were  wholesomely 

*  See,  for  example,  Bulletin  2  of  the  Seybert  Institution 
of  Philadelphia  on  the  Handling  of  Cases  by  the  Juvenile 
Court  and  Court  of  Domestic  Relations  in  that  city. 

217 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

severe.  But  he  added  that  he  had  not  realized 
before  what  a  rich  field  of  usefulness  there  could 
be  for  evidence  outside  the  court  room.  "The 
great  thing,"  he  continued,  "is  that  in  the  court 
of  the  next  generation,  with  its  staff  of  social 
workers,  these  materials  and  methods  will  be  the 
main  ones,  and  some  large  part  of  our  present 
technical  rules  will  have  gone  by  the  board." 

There  is  a  long  road  to  travel  before  any  of  us 
can  lay  claim  to  such  a  knowledge  of  the  elements 
of  social  evidence,  to  such  skill  in  effecting  better 
adjustments  between  men  and  their  social  en- 
vironment, as  will  even  begin  to  justify  this 
prophecy,  but  the  goal  is  worth  striving  for,  and, 
meanwhile,  every  stage  of  the  journey  is  full  of 
interest  and  instruction. 

It  must  not  be  inferred  that  the  home,  the 
school,  the  workshop,  the  hospital,  and  the  court 
are  the  only  places  in  which  social  case  work  has 
already  proved  of  service,  or  in  which  it  will  have 
to  bear  an  important  part  in  shaping  future 
policies.  Even  in  these  five  social  institutions, 
only  a  few  of  the  case  work  developments  al- 
218 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

ready  achieved  have  here  been  indicated.  Thus 
nothing  has  been  said  of  the  combination  of 
domestic  science  and  case  work  in  improved 
household  management,  and  nothing  of  the  tech- 
nique now  well  developed  for  that  rehabilitation 
of  homes  which  must  follow  public  disasters. 
The  protection  of  children  from  cruelty  and  neg- 
lect is  one  branch  of  child  welfare  service,  while 
special  case  work  with  difficult  children  and  with 
those  placed  out  in  foster  homes  form  two  other 
well  denned  child-helping  specialties.  Another 
field  not  yet  developed  might  be  the  application 
of  the  principles  of  family  and  child  welfare  to  the 
administration  of  trust  estates,  where  financial 
institutions  now  responsible  as  administrators  of 
small  annuities  and  the  like  which  go  to  minors 
and  to  maladjusted  adults  could  incidentally 
serve  the  social  as  well  as  the  material  welfare  of 
their  clients. 

Nothing  has  been  said  in  connection  with 
schools  about  the  possible  social  developments  in 
their  attendance  departments,  though  the  at- 
tendance officer's  task,  rightly  understood,  is  a 
social  one.  The  issuers  of  working  papers  to 
219 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

school  children  and  those  who  attempt  voca- 
tional guidance  should  have  some  knowledge  of 
case  work  technique. 

Shop  management,  and  responsibility  for  em- 
ploying, classifying,  and  promoting  workers  in- 
volves many  of  these  same  processes.  Commis- 
sions for  the  blind,  societies  for  the  care  of 
cripples,  agencies  for  the  re-education  of  the 
handicapped,  find  social  case  work  an  important 
adjunct.  In  the  prisons  and  reformatories  of  the 
country  this  way  of  dealing  with  inmates  in- 
dividually is  not  yet  well  established  save  in  the 
exceptional  institution,  but  at  least  parole  officers 
and  after-care  agents  should  be  case  workers. 
Legal  aid  societies  were  organized  by  lawyers, 
but  a  number  of  their  promoters  are  now  seeking 
closer  relations  with  family  welfare  societies  in 
order  to  combine,  in  such  service,  the  social  with 
the  legal  point  of  view.  A  recent  development 
has  been  the  application  of  social  case  work  to 
the  better  care  and  disposition  of  stranded  travel- 
ers. The  immigrant  just  arriving  at  an  American 
port  might  be  supposed  to  stand  more  in  need  of 
skilful  individualized  guidance  than  any  one  else. 

220 


SCHOOL— WORKSHOP— HOSPITAL— COURT 

As  a  matter  of  fact  he  does.  But  this  particular 
responsibility  has  been  left  in  unskilled  hands  too 
often  or  has  not  been  discharged  at  all,  so  that 
there  is  no  adequate  development  of  case  work  at 
our  national  gateways  today,  though  public  atten- 
tion has  been  called  to  this  serious  lack,  and  there 
is  reason  to  hope  that  it  may  soon  be  supplied. 

Every  month  or  so,  some  new  and  beneficent 
application  of  social  case  work  to  human  welfare 
— often  from  an  entirely  unexpected  quarter — 
comes  to  my  attention.  Sometimes  the  new 
development  is  far  removed  from  the  types  of  ser- 
vice in  which  case  work  originated.  One  of  these, 
for  example,  comes  in  the  private  practice  of 
physicians  and  psychiatrists,  who,  after  seeing 
what  case  work  can  do  in  their  free  clinics,  are 
seeking  the  services  of  case  workers  for  their 
well-to-do  patients.  How  rapidly  social  case 
work  will  develop  a  private  practice  of  its  own 
cannot  be  predicted,  but  it  should  be  evident 
from  the  examples  given  in  this  book  that  thfe 
skill  here  described  can  be  utilized  quite  as  well 
in  the  homes  of  the  rich  as  in  those  of  the  poor, 
that,  in  the  one  as  in  the  other,  personality  can  be 
thwarted  and  retarded,  developed  and  enriched. 
221 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK  AND 
THEIR  INTERRELATIONS 

O  AINTE-BEUVE  tells  of  a  surgeon  in  the  time 
^  of  Louis  XIV  who  once  said  to  Chancellor 
Daguesseau  that  he  wished  to  see  an  impassable 
wall  of  separation  erected  between  surgery  and 
medicine.  The  Chancellor  replied,  "But,  mon- 
sieur, on  which  side  of  the  walL  will  you  place  the 
patient?"  The  Chancellor's  question  is  still  a 
pertinent  one  in  most  professions.  Everywhere 
the  specialist  is  in  danger  of  developing  an  insular 
habit  of  mind,  and  the  phenomenon  does  occur 
occasionally  even  within  the  boundaries  of  social 
work.  We  have  seen  that  a  certain  specialized 
form  of  skill  has  been  taken  by  the  social  case 
worker  into  our  homes,  courts,  schools,  medical 
institutions,  and  industries.  But  quite  as  im- 
portant as  this  skill  and  quite  as  much  needed  in 
these  institutions  is  the  case  worker's  sense  of  the 

222 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

whole  of  social  work  and  of  the  relation  of  each 
part  to  that  whole. 

The  other  forms  of  social  work,  all  of  which 
interplay  with  case  work,  are  three — group  work, 
social  reform,  and  social  research.  Case  work 
seeks  to  effect  better  social  relations  by  dealing  L 
with  individuals  one  by  one  or  within  the  inti- 
mate  group  of  the  family.  But  social  work  also 
achieves  the  same  general  ends  in  these  other 
ways.  It  includes  a  wide  variety  of  group  activi- 
ties— settlement  work,  recreational  work,  club, 
neighborhood  and  local  community  work — in 
which  the  individual,  though  still  met  face  to 
face,  becomes  one  of  a  number.  By  a  method 
different  from  that  employed  in  either  case  or 
group  work,  though  with  the  same  end  in  view, 
social  reform  seeks  to  improve  conditions  in  the  f- 
mass,  chiefly  through  social  propaganda  and  so- 
cial legislation.  Whether  the  immediate  object 
be  better  housing,  better  health,  better  working 
conditions,  better  use  of  leisure,  or  a  long  list  of 
other  objectives,  the  main  purpose  in  these  dif- 
ferent social  reforms  still  is  to  advance  the 
development  of  our  human  kind  by  improving 
223 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

social  relations.  Finally,  social  research,  with 
its  precious  freight  of  original  discovery  in  all 
the  fields  covered  by  social  work,  has  also  the 
secondary  task  of  assembling  known  facts  in 
order  to  re-interpret  them  for  use  in  social  reform, 
in  group  work,  and  in  case  work. 

I  have  said  earlier  that  social  case  work  would 
be  only  a  fragment  if  separated  from  the  much 
larger  field  occupied  by  social  work  in  general. 
It  is  not  enough  to  say  this,  however;  the  inter- 
dependence of  all  the  parts  of  social  work,  or 
rather  the  dependence  of  case  work  upon  these 
other  parts  and  of  these  others  upon  case  work, 
must  be  illustrated. 

As  regards  the  relation  between  social  work 
with  individuals  and  social  work  with  groups,  it 
should  be  evident  to  any  one  who  has  read  the 
story  in  these  pages  of  Miss  Sullivan's  work  with 
Miss  Keller  and  the  six  case  illustrations  follow- 
ing that  story,  that  the  intelligent  use  of  com- 
munity resources,  of  recreational,  educational, 
and  co-operative  associations,  is  the  case  worker's 
best  indirect  means  of  developing  personality. 
The  isolated  individual  or  family  is  never  the 
224 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

normal  individual  or  family.  Note,  for  example, 
how  many  community  resources  were  summoned 
to  the  assistance  of  Winifred  Jones  and  her  chil- 
dren before  that  home  began  to  assume  a  more 
attractive  aspect  to  its  members.  There  is  also  a 
field  halfway  between  case  work  and  group  work 
which,  as  suggested  at  the  end  of  Chapter  V, 
might  well  provide,  when  better  cultivated,  new 
data  for  social  psychology. 

No  better  advice  could  be  given  to  family 
case  workers,  I  believe,  than  to  study  and 
develop  their  work  at  its  point  of  intersection 
with  social  research,  with  group  activities  and 
with  social  reform  or  mass  betterment.  This 
does  not  mean  that  they  should  drop  their  work 
or  slight  it  in  order  to  make  special  studies  or 
to  engage  in  legislative  campaigns,  but  it  does 
mean  that  they  should  be  more  scientifically  pro- 
ductive than  they  now  are,  that  they  should  be 
making  social  discoveries  as  a  by-product  of 
successful  case  work  (to  borrow  a  phrase  of  Mrs. 
Sheffield's),  and  that  they  should  be  bearing 
faithful  witness  to  the  need  of  social  reforms 
wherever  their  daily  work  reveals  the  need.  They 
*5  225 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

should  supply  the  pertinent  details  necessary 
during  the  preliminary  period  of  public  educa- 
tion, and  help  later  to  make  any  new  legislative 
measures  workable  by  applying  them  in  their 
case  work. 

Two  years  ago  I  had  occasion  to  examine  a 
number  of  outlines  of  sociology  intended  as 
textbooks  for  college  students.  Each  devoted  at 
least  one  chapter  to  the  family,  but  each  handled 
the  subject  with  a  polite  caution  and  an  absence 
of  first-hand  observation  which  was  depressing. 
The  lack  of  substance  in  this  initial  portion  of 
the  subject  matter  of  sociology  is  due  not  so 
much  to  timidity  in  the  authorities  as  to  the  al- 
most total  absence  of  case  studies  which  bear 
upon  family  life.  Here,  in  this  oldest  of  human 
institutions,  still  center  the  unsolved  problems  of 
physical  and  social  heredity  and  of  physical  and 
social  environment.  Case  work  cannot  solve 
these  problems,  of  course,  but  it  can  develop  a 
fruitful  method  of  approach  to  their  study,  and 
should  provide,  in  time,  a  body  of  social  data  to 
aid  in  their  solution. 

Social  discovery  is  already  indebted  to  family 
226 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

\ 

case  work  for  certain  housing  reforms  and  for  the 

first  tuberculosis  campaigns.  It  has  also  had  a 
share,  to  be  indicated  later,  in  child  labor  re- 
form. But  with  reference  to  the  internal  organi- 
zation of  the  family  itself,  its  best  work  is  still  to 
be  achieved,  though  at  present  there  are  certain 
studies  in  process  which  should  prove  helpful, 
such  as  the  study  of  marriage  laws  and  marriage 
law  administration  previously  referred  to;  such, 
also,  as  inquiries  bearing  upon  household  manage- 
ment and  upon  illegitimacy.  To  these  should  be 
added  the  already  published  studies  of  desertion 
and  non-support.  There  can  be  no  question  that 
family  case  workers  are  in  an  exceptional  position 
to  make  valuable  observations  upon  family  life 
at  first  hand  where  they  are  protected,  as  they 
should  be,  from  too  large  a  case-load,  and  where 
they  have  had  the  kind  of  theoretical  training  in 
social  science  and  practical  training  in  social 
work  which  supplies  them  with  the  necessary 
background.  "The  interplay,"  says  Professor 
Park,  "of  the  attractions,  tensions,  and  accom- 
modations of  personalities  in  the  intimate  bonds 
of  family  life  have  up  to  the  present  found  no 
227 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

concrete  description  or  adequate  analysis  in 
sociological  inquiry."*  For  example,  the  very 
phrase  "democracy  in  the  family"  lacks  defini- 
tion at  present,  and  will  continue  to  lack  it  until 
the  case  method  can  supply  the  more  specific 
observation  and  detail  which  will  develop  its 
meaning. 

But  what  relation  can  the  highly  individualized 
work  of  the  visiting  teacher  have  to  social  work  in 
general?  In  the  first  place,  visiting  teachers  are 
interpreters  of  the  intent  of  a  whole  group  of 
laws,  including  more  especially  those  for  the  pro- 
tection of  minors,  such  as  the  school  attendance 
and  child  labor  laws.  Their  service  to  social  re- 
form, like  the  service  of  the  family  case  worker,  is 
a  reciprocal  one,  for  their  work  could  not  go  very 
far  without  the  aid  of  social  legislation.  More- 
over, "the  replies,"  to  quote  again  from  the  re- 
port published  by  the  New  York  Public  Educa- 
tion Association,  "show  that  visiting  teachers 
have  not  been  content  to  end  their  work  with  the 

*  Park  and  Burgess:  Introduction  to  the  Science  of 
Sociology,  p.  216.  Chicago,  University  of  Chicago  Press, 
1921. 

228 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

adjustment  of  individual  children,  but  have 
drawn  conclusions  from  case  work  as  to  general 
underlying  causes  and  basic  changes  which 
should  forestall  certain  maladjustments."* 

Again,  the  child  is  a  social  animal,  and  there  is 
no  better  way  to  discover  neighborhood  condi- 
tions and  deal  with  them  than  to  see  them  first 
in  their  effect  for  good  or  ill  upon  some  one  small 
person  who  is  responding  to  them  to  the  very  top 
of  his  bent.  David  H.  Holbrook  tells  in  The 
Family  how  the  work  of  a  visiting  teacher  brought 
new  life  into  those  neighborhood  activities  of  a 
certain  district  which  centered  within  the  school 
itself.  When  the  mothers,  especially  the  foreign 
mothers,  came  to  school  parties,  it  was  this 
social  worker  who  knew  them  and  could  make 
them  feel  at  home  in  the  school.  Mr.  Holbrook 
asks  why  such  linking  together  of  home  and 
school  should  be  confined  to  poorer  neighbor- 
hoods. "When  the  teachers  and  patrons  of  so- 
called  '  better '  schools  discover  what  advantages 
the  boys  and  girls  of  [other]  schools  really  have 
through  their  visiting  teachers  there  will  be  a 

*  Opus  cit.,  p.  61. 
229 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

stampede  similar  to  the  rush  that  finally  swept 
manual  training  from  its  early  position  in  classes 
for  mental  defectives  to  an  integral  part  in  every 
school  curriculum."* 
i  The  hospital  social  worker  is  in  a  peculiarly 
favorable    position,    through    close    association 

(with  the  medical  profession,  to  aid  social  reform 
and  social  research.  The  two  clinicians — the 
social  and  the  medical — have  their  part  to  play 
in  the  prevention  of  disease  and  in  education  for 
health.  Here,  too,  as  in  so  many  other  places, 
prevention,  which  is  sometimes  written  about  as 
if  it  were  a  patent  medicine,  is  neither  a  thing 
apart  nor  a  thing  substituted,  but  a  most  val- 
uable product  of  the  whole  process.  There  is  new 
legislation,  for  example,  designed  to  control  the 
regulation  of  communicable  and  industrial  dis- 
eases. The  practicing  physician  and  the  social 
worker  will  discover  any  weaknesses  in  these  new 
laws  by  trying  to  utilize  them  to  the  utmost. 
Gradually  they  can  be  amended  and,  by  steady 
pressure  from  clinicians,  will  become  a  part  of  the 
standard  of  the  community. 

*  The  Family  for  February,  1921. 
230 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

Relations  between  the  judicial  function  of  the 
presiding  officer  of  a  court  and  the  socially  inter- 
pretative function  of  the  case  worker  engaged  in 
court  service  make  it  especially  important  that 
the  court  worker  should  know  the  history  of 
social  work  and  should  have  a  clear  grasp,  not 
only  of  his  own  special  technique,  but  of  its  rela- 
tion to  all  the  other  forms  of  social  work.  No 
narrow  specialization,  no  coaching  for  cfvil  ser- 
vice examinations,  can  possibly  fit  him  for  his 
responsible  task.  In  fact,  it  would  be  difficult  to 
discover  the  case  work  field  in  which  the  full-time 
professional  worker  could  fittingly  serve  without 
good  all-round  social  work  training. 

It  is  natural,  I  suppose,  that  closer  relations 
than  existed  formerly  between  social  work  and 
industrial  reform  should  have  begun  with  the  at- 
tempt to  prevent  the  premature  employment  of 
children.  The  earlier  child  labor  reform  cam- 
paigns in  this  country  gave  me,  as  it  happens,  my 
first  insight  into  the  share  that  every  kind  of 
social  work  has  to  take  in  a  genuine  and  perma- 
nent social  advance,  for  progress  in  the  child 
labor  field  has  been  striking,  despite  the  fact  that 
231 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

some  of  our  states  still  lag  behind  and  that  the 
labor  of  children  on  farms  remains  unregulated. 
The  original  national  program  of  child  labor  re- 
form, adopted  later  in  outline,  had  its  inception 
in  the  mind  of  a  woman — a  social  worker  belong- 
ing to  the  social  and  legislative  reform  group.  It 
won  hospitable  support  at  once  from  neighbor- 
hood and  settlement  workers,  and  from  the  social 
case  workers  of  the  country.  Sometimes  one  of 
these  two  groups,  sometimes  the  other  helped  to 
gather  the  detailed  facts  necessary  to  arouse  the 
public,  for  such  facts  were  needed,  locality  by 
locality.  Using  in  this  part  of  the  process  what- 
ever elementary  knowledge  of  the  technique  of 
social  research  they  happened  to  have  at  com- 
mand, neighborhood  and  case  workers  supplied 
material  for  pamphlets,  leaflets,  and  newspaper 
articles.  These  by-products  of  individual  and 
neighborhood  service  would  have  been  of  little 
use,  however,  without  the  skill  of  the  social 
workers  specializing  in  social  reform,  who  pro- 
vided at  this  stage  the  knowledge  of  how  to  edu- 
cate the  public,  how  to  draft  workable  laws,  how 
to  conduct  legislative  campaigns.  At  the  propa- 
232 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

ganda  stage  all  the  different  social  work  groups 
helped,  sometimes  against  pressure  from  power- 
ful interests.  The  social  reform  group,  however, 
furnished  the  leadership,  and  also  much  of  the 
watchful  oversight  which  has  since  been  nec- 
essary. 

An  important  part  was  borne  by  the  case  work- 
ers again  just  after  the  new  child  labor  measures 
became  law.  I  know  from  personal  experience 
in  a  certain  state  where  there  was,  at  the  time, 
greater  industrial  demand  for  the  labor  of  children 
than  in  any  other,  how  easily  the  new  child  labor 
law  might  have  been  a  dead  letter  save  for  the 
devoted  service  of  the  case  work  agencies.  For 
awhile  many  employers  and  parents  were  ac- 
tively hostile  to  enforcement,  while  the  adminis- 
trators of  the  law  were  indifferent.  The  case 
workers  who  were  my  colleagues  had  to  bear 
more  abuse  in  a  good  cause  than  I  have  known 
them  to  be  subjected  to  before  or  since.  But 
when  they  undertook  to  work  out,  case  by  case, 
a  reasonable  substitute  plan  for  dealing  with 
every  instance  of  alleged  hardship — every  in- 
stance, that  is,  in  which  parents  claimed  that 
233 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

they  must  have  the  earnings  of  a  child  under 
fourteen — they  were  able  in  co-operation  with  the 
local  education  association  to  render  non-enforce- 
ment unnecessary  and  inexcusable.  Wherever, 
in  any  state  which  had  passed  a  child  labor  law, 
there  were  workers  in  children's  societies  and  fam- 
ily workers  "  familiar  with  the  homes  of  the  people, 
habituated  to  detailed  educational  processes  in 
those  homes,  and  with  the  patience  to  make  adjust- 
ments, there  the  assimilation  of  a  new  standard 
[went]  forward  unchecked."*  Where  there  is  no 
such  detailed  work  going  forward  quietly  from 
day  to  day,  it  often  happens  that  a  law  upon  the 
statute  books  which  has  potential  social  value  is 
yet  no  better  than  a  dishonored  promissory  note. 
After  this  experience  I  learned  to  watch  for  a 
relation  between  case  work  and  any  given  social 
reform.  It  has  happened  again  and  again, 
though  not  always,  that  case  work  has  preceded 
and  led  up  to  the  mass  movement  by  supplying 
pertinent  observations  and  recorded  data.    Then 

*See  a  paper  of  mine,  "The  Social  Case  Worker  in  a 
Changing  World,"  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  National  Con- 
ference of  Charities  (now  National  Conference  of  Social 
Work)  for  1915,  p.  48. 

234 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

later  it  has  followed  after  the  mass  movement, 
and  has  applied  the  new  standard  in  individual 
cases  at  a  stage  when  the  application  was  still 
difficult.  There  is  a  still  later  stage,  as  in  child 
labor  law  enforcement,  when  social  research  must 
be  called  in  to  study  special  phases  of  the  sub- 
ject— the  street  trades,  for  example,  or  the  labor 
of  children  in  the  beet  fields.  This  study  must 
often  be  undertaken  by  an  agency  which  con- 
tinues its  work  long  after  the  first  strongholds  of 
prejudice  and  inertia  have  been  overcome.  Such 
work  is  still  continued  in  the  national  and  state 
Child  Labor  Committees  today,  and  it  must  not 
be  assumed  that  any  case  work  society  can  be- 
come a  substitute  for  such  social  reform  bodies. 
It  is  sometimes  claimed  that  social  case  work- 
ers are  not  as  much  interested  in  bettering  the 
working  conditions  of  adults  as  they  have  been 
in  preventing  the  employment  of  children.  It  is 
true  that  the  direct  application  of  their  particular 
form  of  skill  to  adult  industry  is  very  recent,  but 
for  many  years  they  have  been  striving  to  apply 
the  broader  principles  of  industrial  justice  to 
their  daily  tasks.  Their  attitude  toward  "relief 
235 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

in  aid  of  wages"  is  an  example,  as  shown  in  the 
following  passage  from  an  address  by  Shelby  M. 
Harrison  on  Social  Case  Workers  and  Better  In- 
dustrial Conditions: 

I  was  recently  told  of  the  case  of  a  bricklayer  who  had 
come  to  one  of  the  charitable  societies  in  New  York  for 
aid.  He  was  a  foreigner,  and  at  the  time  was  not  working 
at  his  trade,  but  was  employed  as  a  porter  in  one  of  the 
large  downtown  buildings.  He  had  a  large  family,  and, 
since  his  pay  was  only  $12  a  week,  the  children  were  not 
getting  enough  to  eat.  The  question  before  the  commit- 
tee was  what  to  do.  Four  alternatives  emerged  from  the 
discussion:  First,  the  society  could  supplement  the  man's 
wages  by  a  regular  weekly  allowance  to  the  family  and  let 
him  continue  at  work  where  he  was;  second,  the  society 
might  try  to  get  his  employer  to  pay  him  more  wages  and 
let  him  still  stay  where  he  was;  third,  it  might  try  to  get 
him  back  into  his  trade  of  bricklaying  where  he  could  earn 
a  larger  wage,  the  society  underwriting  the  family's  needs 
until  he  should  become  re-established;  fourth,  it  might 
find  him  better  paying  work  outside  his  trade. 

It  will  be  seen  that  any  one  of  the  other  courses  would 
be  better  than  the  first.  .  .  .  Instead  of  taking  the  sim- 
ple and  easy  course  involved  in  supplementing  the  man's 
wages,  the  only  course  that  some  of  the  committee  would 
have  thought  of,  it  was  far  more  serviceable  to  the  family, 
and  impressed  an  important  principle  upon  that  part  of 
the  committee,  when  the  rule  was  followed  which  de- 
clared in  effect  that  ''industrial  conditions  and  personal 

236 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

capacities  are  far  from  being  as  inelastic"  as  most  of  us 
suppose. 

The  careful  consideration  of  this  case  brought  out  other 
lessons  also.  It  showed  that  social  case  workers  must  be 
interested  in  the  general  mobility  of  labor;  in  getting 
workers  into  jobs  where  they  can  do  their  best,  into 
places  where  wages  for  them  are  highest  relatively  or 
the  cost  of  living  lowest.  The  case  worker  must  think  of 
cases  in  terms  of  the  whole  state  or  the  whole  country  and 
consequently  must  be  interested  in  the  many  agencies  es- 
tablished for  the  efficient  exchange  of  labor.  There  may 
have  been  still  other  lessons,  but  this  case  will  illustrate 
some  of  the  reasons  for  urging  that  the  treatment  must  be 
on  a  broad  scale  and  for  believing  that  in  so  treating  them 
fundamental  industrial  principles  will  be  taught.* 

In  his  paper  Mr.  Harrison  suggests  some  of  the 
ways  in  which  case  workers  can  advance  public 
education  on  industrial  questions.  They  can  do 
this  by  bearing  in  mind  the  industrial  facts  in 
cases  under  treatment,  by  using  single  cases  to 
illustrate  important  industrial  principles  in  the 
classroom,  and  by  proper  emphasis  given  to  the 
subject  in  case  committees,  in  the  press,  and  on 
the  platform.  Social  case  records  in  numbers  can 
also  furnish  industrial  research  with  clues  to  be 

*  Harrison,  Shelby  M.,  in  Proceedings  of  the  National 
Conference  of  Social  Work  for  1918,  p.  305. 

237 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

followed  up,  and  can  serve  as  a  basis  for  industrial 
studies  made  by  case  work  agencies  themselves. 
The  public  official  charged  with  the  enforce- 
ment of  a  law  in  the  successful  operation  of  which 
no  politically  influential  group  in  the  community 
is  interested,  will  often  find  his  best  backing  in  a 
case  work  agency,  whether  the  law  is  a  new  or  an 
old  one.    Miss  Edith  Abbott  writes: 

On  two  successive  committee  days  in  the  old  West  Side 
office  [of  the  Chicago  United  Charities]  we  had  the  diffi- 
cult problem  of  providing  for  the  family  of  a  tubercular 
man  who  was  doing  "  light  work."  One,  I  remember,  was 
a  flagman  on  the  elevated  railroad.  It  occurred  to  some 
one  to  ask  for  the  industrial  histories  of  these  men  in  the 
hope  that  some  former  employer  might  be  found  who 
would  assist.  Both  men  had  had  a  history  of  intermittent 
light  jobs  since  their  physical  breakdown,  but  it  appeared 
when  a  report  was  made  at  a  later  meeting  of  the  commit- 
tee that  both  men  had  contracted  tuberculosis  during 
their  employment  in  the  same  West  Side  foundry,  where 
both  had  worked  for  a  series  of  years.  This  interesting 
fact  was  promptly  reported  to  a  new  chief  in  the  Depart- 
ment of  Factory  Inspection,  who  promptly  investigated 
this  place  and  found  a  large  number  of  violations  of  the 
so-called  "Health,  Safety  and  Comfort  law."  * 

♦Abbott,  Edith:  Paper  on  "The  Social  Case  Worker 
and  the  Enforcement  of  Industrial  Legislation."  Proceed- 
ings of  National  Conference  of  Social  Work  for  1918,  p.  315. 

238 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

No  better  service  could  be  rendered  by  a  case 
work  agency  than  this  co-operation  with  com- 
petent but  hard  pressed  public  officials.  Miss 
Abbott  also  gives  illustrations  in  her  valuable 
paper  of  the  useful  things  that  can  be  done  by 
case  workers  when  public  officials  are  inert  and 
evasive. 

It  is  not  so  stated  in  my  story,  but  Rupert 
Young's  original  application  to  a  family  welfare 
society*  had  been  made  during  the  panic  winter 
of  1 9 14-15,  when  he  was  out  of  work  and  had 
applied  for  material  relief.  After  consultation 
with  former  employers,  some  assistance  was 
given.  A  little  later  Rupert  found  part  time  work 
and,  in  the  stock  phrase  of  social  agencies,  "the 
case  was  closed."  The  true  situation  in  the 
Young  family  and  the  causes  of  maladjustment 
operating  at  that  time  which  were  sure  to  lead  to 
further  trouble  later,  were  not  discovered.  The 
failure  is  fully  accounted  for.  The  size  of  the 
society's  task  had  increased  so  rapidly  during  the 
panic  that  it  was  engaged  for  the  most  part  in 
disaster  relief  work  of  a  necessary  but  (to  the 
*  See  Chapter  III. 
239 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

real  case  worker)  most  unsatisfactory  sort.  After 
that  winter  was  over,  industrial  conditions,  owing 
to  the  artificial  demand  for  labor  created  by  the 
war,  changed  for  the  better  far  more  rapidly  than 
is  usual  after  a  panic.  The  plight  of  Rupert  and 
his  wife  was  again  reported  to  the  society  in  June, 
19 15,  and  real  social  treatment  then  began. 
Meanwhile,  business  had  revived  and  the  number 
of  families  under  the  society's  care  had  fallen  off 
— they  fell  off  nearly  fifty  per  cent  in  the  next 
two  years.  Judged  by  totals  alone  the  work  that 
it  continued  to  do  might  have  seemed  fifty  per 
cent  less  necessary,  but  any  one  who  knows  case 
work  also  knows  that  its  best  and  most  construc- 
tive services  were  rendered  possible  by  this 
change  to  better  times.  As  already  stated,  none 
are  more  eager  to  see  employment  regularized 
than  are  the  case  workers.  They  know  better 
than  most  that  the  best  remedial  service  to  an 
unemployed  man,  absolutely  necessary  though  it 
is,  can  be  only  a  poor  substitute  for  his  getting 
real  work  at  real  wages;  whereas  many  of  the 
most  valuable  services  of  case  work,  such  as 
those  actually  achieved  in  the  Young  family, 
240 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

have,  for  lack  of  time,  to  be  set  aside  during 
periods  of  irregular  employment. 

Just  before  the  Armistice  a  distinguished  pub- 
licist closely  identified  with  various  social  re- 
forms wrote  the  following  letter,  which  is  quoted 
by  Miss  J.  C.  Colcord  in  the  Proceedings  of  the 
National  Conference  of  Social  Work  for  19 19: 

For  four  years  we  have  been  without  immigration  and 
for  two  without  unemployment,  other  than  seasonal.  I 
hope  you  are  planning  a  survey  which  will  tell  us: 

1.  How  much  charity  organization  work  [social  case 
work  with  families]  has  been  reduced  thereby. 

2.  How  much  further  reduction  we  may  expect  from 
the  coming  abolition  of  the  liquor  traffic. 

3.  How  much  additional  reduction  could  be  effected  by 
other  social  and  industrial  reforms  now  under  considera- 
tion. 

4.  What  the  irreducible  minimum  (for  the  near  future) 
of  charity  organization  work  is.  * 

A  fitting  reply  would  have  been  to  submit  the 
summary  of  Rupert  Young's  case  and  of  all  the 
cases  in  Chapter  III.  It  might  be  argued  that, 
as  Rupert  was  a  drinking  man,  a  prohibition 
amendment  was  all  that  was  needed  to  solve  his 
troubles.  But,  given  the  conditions  of  law  en- 
*  See  Proceedings,  p.  317. 
16  241 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

forcement  as  we  find  them  today  in  Rupert's  own 
city,  it  is  certain  that  the  amendment  alone 
could  not  have  kept  him  sober,  nor  would  strict 
enforcement  have  met  his  need,  though  undoubt- 
edly it  would  have  helped.  Moreover,  it  is  a  mis- 
take to  apply  the  quantitative  test,  to  ask  "how 
much"  in  connection  with  case  work,  until  we 
know  what  case  work  is  and  why  it  is,  and  until 
we  realize  fully  both  its  limitations  and  its  pos- 
sibilities. With  regard  to  the  "other  social  and 
industrial  reforms  now  under  consideration"  to 
which  the  publicist  refers,  I  can  only  say  with 
Miss  Colcord,  "the  more  the  better."  Case 
work  is  not  the  rival  of  any  of  them  or  a  substi- 
tute for  any. 

This  topic  of  the  interplay  of  different  forms  of 
social  work  deserves  fuller  treatment  than  I  have 
been  able  to  give  it,  but  that  all  forms  are  inex- 
tricably interwoven  in  the  great  task  of  further- 
ing social  advance  should  be  evident.  A  colleague 
of  mine  who  was  examining  a  group  of  applicants 
for  certain  positions  complained  that  too  many  of 
them  were  oversupplied  with  slogans  and  under- 
supplied  with  the  technical  details  of  the  task  to 
242 


THE  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  WORK 

be  done.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  can  be  no 
solid  advance  without  patient  attention  to  detail 
or  without  respect  for  workmanship.  Unhappily 
a  certain  contempt  for  technique  often  lurks  be- 
hind a  glib  use  of  catch-words  and  high-sounding 
phrases.  On  the  other  hand,  the  professional 
worker  who,  in  any  field,  has  imagination  enough 
to  deal  effectively  with  concrete  things,  to  scruti- 
nize them  and  "put  them  together  without  ab- 
straction," is  also  likely  to  be  the  one  who  can  be 
trusted  to  see  their  larger  relations.  The  great 
technicians,  like  Osier  in  medicine  and  Pasteur  in 
chemistry,  have  been  men  highly  sensitive  to  the 
relations  of  the  part  to  the  whole. 

As  one  of  the  newest  of  the  professions,  social 
work  should  strive  to  hold  an  even  balance  be- 
tween the  specializing  and  the  generalizing  ten- 
dencies. In  its  training  schools,  it  must  develop 
a  sound  technique  under  instructors  who  know  at 
first  hand  the  practice  of  its  different  specialties. 
In  a  strong  professional  organization,  national  in 
scope,  it  must  be  able  to  hold  all  the  forms  of 
social  work  together  and  steadily  enlarge  that 
well-cultivated  field  which  is  occupied  by  all  in 
common. 

243 


/ 


XI 

CASE  WORK  AND  DEMOCRACY 

TN  MIDDLEMARCH,  Dr.  Lydgate  expresses 
A  this  view  of  his  work:  "I  should  never  have 
been  happy  in  any  profession  that  did  not  call 
forth  the  highest  intellectual  strain,  and  yet  keep 
me  in  good  warm  contact  with  my  neighbors." 
Social  case  workers  have  this  same  feeling  about 
their  task.  Their  profession  is  an  arduous  one, 
but  it  puts  upon  each  practitioner  the  highest  in- 
tellectual strain  of  which  he  is  capable,  while  his 
contacts  with  the  human  side  of  life  are  warm, 
continuous,  and  richly  rewarding. 

Those  who  began  years  ago,  in  some  of  the  fam- 
ily welfare  agencies  and  children's  aid  societies, 
to  develop  a  method  of  dealing  with  disadvan- 
taged families  and  with  dependent  children — a 
method  which  took  personal  and  social  possibili- 
ties more  fully  into  account  than  had  previously 
been  the  case — entered  upon  their  task  with  the 
244 


CASE  WORK  AND  DEMOCRACY 

courage  and  devotion  of  pioneers.  They  had  no 
other  end  in  view,  however,  than  to  do  their  best 
for  clients  A  and  B  and  C ;  their  sole  purpose  was 
to  give  these  socially  handicapped  individuals  a 
square  deal.  Working  out  faithfully  this  legiti- 
mate and  necessary  aim,  they  did  not  realize  that 
they  were  also  helping  to  build  some  of  the 
foundations  of  essential  justice  for  the  democ- 
racy of  the  future. 

The  earlier  case  work,  in  the  light  of  our  accu- 
mulated experience,  often  seems  crude,  but  mod- 
ern case  workers  should  realize  that  their  own 
labors,  while  aiding  new  discovery  now,  may  some 
day  make  a  like  impression  upon  their  successors. 
Not  any  more  devotedly,  but  more  clear-sight- 
edly, perhaps,  than  formerly,  they  can  attack 
each  new  difficulty  against  a  background  of  total 
social  purpose.  That  sense  of  the  whole  of  so- 
cial work  to  which  I  have  referred  more  than  once 
can  now  be  an  ever-present  reality. 

An  important  part  of  that  whole  is  the  service 
which  social  work  can  render  in  the  field  of  public 
administration.  It  must  be  evident  from  my  dis- 
cussion of  individual  differences  in  Chapter  VI 
245 


LX 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

and  from  the  brief  outline  in  the  chapter  preced- 
ing this  one,  describing  the  different  fields  of  social 
work,  that  the  strengthening  of  public  adminis- 
tration seems  to  me  one  of  the  great  ends  which 
every  form  of  social  endeavor  must  have  in  view. 
But  it  is  possible  to  move  toward  that  end  and 
transfer  the  special  contributions  of  social  work 
into  government  keeping  with  such  ill-considered 
haste  that,  when  they  arrive  at  their  destination, 
the  label  minus  the  contents  is  all  that  remains. 
As  this  preliminary  examination  of  case  work 
draws  to  its  close,  I  should  like  to  add  a  few 
words  to  what  has  already  been  said  about  the 
relation  of  social  work,  and  of  case  work  more 
especially,  to  democracy. 

Every  few  years,  inspired  in  part  by  some  reali- 
zation of  the  present  day  weaknesses  of  public 
administration  and  in  part  by  a  narrow  view 
of  what  constitutes  democracy,  some  one  makes 
the  discovery  that  all  the  activities  of  social 
work  should  be  absorbed  by  the  state.  Others 
of  us,  who  feel  that  the  state  is  only  one  of  the 
desirable  forms  of  association  in  a  free  society 
and  that  the  right  of  voluntary  association  is  a 
246 


CASE  WORK  AND  DEMOCRACY 

safeguard  against  autocracy,  are  not  enthusiastic 
about  placing  under  the  state  every  item  in  so 
wide  and  varied  a  group  of  functions,  though 
we  recognize  that  the  auspices  under  which 
any  given  form  of  social  work — case  work,  for 
example — continues  to  make  headway  will 
have  to  change  from  time  to  time.  Whether  or 
not  these  changes  mean,  as  they  probably  will 
and  should,  that  certain  casework  tasks  initiated 
privately  and  still  under  private  management  are 
to  become  public  functions  later,  all  will  agree 
that  the  important  thing  is  for  social  work  to  be 
ready  for  changes  to  governmental  control  before 
they  arrive.  Sometimes,  as  we  have  already  seen 
in  these  pages,  public  departments  and  institu- 
tions have  adopted  case  work  policies  in  name 
only,  because  it  was  not  possible  at  the  time 
to  supply  the  necessary  skill  for  their  execution 
or  possible  to  control  the  size  of  the  task.  Lack- 
ing that  control,  pressure  of  numbers  meant  low 
standards  of  service  and  no  permanent  results. 
This  has  not  always  been  the  outcome,  but  those 
who  believe  most  sincerely  in  the  extension  of 
case  work  and  its  extension  under  both  public 
247 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

and  voluntary  control  are  most  anxious  to  see 
each  advance  effected  under  conditions  that  as- 
'  sure  something  better  than  failure. 

Under  whatever  auspices  case  work  is  destined 
to  go  forward,  a  respect  for  personality  will  be 
essential.  Such  respect  implies  a  democratic 
point  of  view.  Social  case  work  cannot  progress 
under  those  who  have  the  autocratic  spirit.  But 
is  that  spirit  to  be  avoided  by  transforming  all 
our  social  agencies  into  government  bureaus  over 
night?  Not  the  one  or  the  other,  but  both  public 
and  private  auspices  will  continue  to  be  neces- 
sary, though  there  is  the  third  possibility  that 
some  social  case  workers  will  develop  a  private, 
independent  practice  of  their  own.  The  pub- 
lic agency  must  be  able  to  assure  some  degree 
of  continuity  of  policy,  free  from  political  party 
control,  before  case  workers  will  enter  its  service 
gladly  and  in  large  numbers.  When  this  con- 
dition is  fulfilled,  certain  forms  of  case  work  may 
well  make  greater  advances  and  certainly  serve  a 
larger  clientele  under  public  management  than 
under  private.  The  privately  supported  agency, 
on  the  other  hand,  which  already  gives  fair  assur- 
248 


CASE  WORK  AND  DEMOCRACY 

ance  of  continuity  of  policy,  must  make  itself 
more  attractive  to  skilled  social  workers  by  giv- 
ing staff  members  a  larger  measure  of  represen- 
tation upon  its  administrative  committees. 

Democracy,  however,  is  not  a  form  of  organi- 
zation but  a  daily  habit  of  life.  It  is  not  enough 
for  social  workers  to  speak  the  language  of  democ- 
racy; they  must  have  in  their  hearts  its  spiritual 
conviction  of  the  infinite  worth  of  our  common 
humanity  before  they  can  be  fit  to  do  any  form  of 
social  work  whatsoever.  Life  itself  achieves  sig- 
nificance and  value  not  from  the  esoteric  things 
shared  by  the  few,  but  from  the  great  common 
experiences  of  the  race — from  the  issues  of  birth 
and  death,  of  affection  satisfied  and  affection  frus- 
trated, from  those  chances  and  hazards  of  daily 
living  that  come  to  all  men.  Unless  these  con- 
ditions common  to  all  humanity  strongly  appeal 
to  us,  or  until  they  do,  we  are  not  ready  to  adopt 
social  case  work  as  our  major  interest. 

For  the  last  eleven  years  it  has  been  my  privi- 
lege to  conduct  every  spring  an  informal  institute 
of  members  selected  from  among  the  professional 
case  workers  in  some  of  the  family  welfare  soci- 
249 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

eties  of  the  country.  As  these  groups  have  been 
chosen  throughout  the  whole  period  on  the  same 
basis,  changes  in  institute  personnel  during  the 
eleven  years  have  been  a  rough  but  fair  index  of 
what  is  happening  to  case  work  in  the  family 
agencies.  The  best  element  in  the  institute  of 
1 92 1  was  no  better  than  the  best  in  the  institute 
of  19 10 ;  but  no  longer  is  there  a  wide  gap  between 
the  most  and  the  least  able.  In  recent  years,  the 
spirit  and  ability  of  the  whole  group  has  been  ex- 
cellent, and  their  leader  can  testify  that  there  is 
no  lack  of  democracy  among  them. 

Another  interesting  fact  to  be  observed  in  the 
field  of  professional  social  work  is  the  increasing 
demand  for  well  trained  case  workers,  whether  in 
the  children's,  the  family,  or  the  medical  field. 
In  some  branches  of  social  work  there  have  been 
fluctuations  in  the  demand,  dependent  upon 
whether  times  were  good  or  bad,  or  the  period 
was  one  of  war  or  peace.  But  for  social  case 
workers  who  can  do  their  work  well  the  demand 
has  continued  to  be  far  greater  than  the  supply. 

The  supremely  important  question  today  is  not 
250 


CASE  WORK  AND  DEMOCRACY 

the  extension  of  case  work  activities  to  larger 
fields,  though  extension  is  undoubtedly  a  goal, 
and  not  whether  such  work  should  be  publicly  or 
privately  supported  at  present,  but  whether  it 
can  be  assured  freedom  of  growth — freedom  to  do 
good  work  and  freedom  to  make  new  discovery 
through  intensive  service.  It  is  the  intensive, 
long  continued  case  work  of  which  I  have  tried 
to  give  a  few  examples  in  this  book  that  holds 
within  itself  the  seeds  of  future  development,  the 
seeds  of  greater  knowledge  of  the  human  material 
with  which  it  so  venturesomely  deals  and  greater 
knowledge  of  the  true  relation  of  man  to  society. 
The  widest  possible  applications  of  case  work  to 
life  can  only  follow,  they  cannot  precede,  the  find- 
ings of  its  best  practitioners;  and  these  findings, 
valuable  as  they  have  already  become,  are  only 
the  first  fruits  of  what  promises  to  be  a  bountiful 
harvest. 

It  follows  that  one  of  the  great,  unused  oppor- 
tunities to  serve  humanity  and  further  social  prog- 
ress lies  in  the  endowment  of  special  ability  in 
this  particular  field.  I  would  not  plead  for  any 
permanent  endowment,  but  for  a  large  sum  to  be 
251 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

expended  in  our  own  day  and  time  in  releasing 
thoroughly  tested  and  exceptionally  gifted  case 
workers  from  pressure  of  overwork,  and  thus  en- 
»able  them  to  render  a  better  grade  of  service.  A 
small  band  of  students  (not  more  than  four  at  any 
one  time)  might  serve  under  these  selected  lead- 
ers, who  would  be  making  careful  note  of  the  re- 
sults of  one  method  and  another,  and  of  the  con- 
ditions under  which  each  had  been  tried. 

The  six  women  who  did  the  work  described  in 
Chapters  II  and  III  live  in  different  cities.  Most 
of  them  do  not  know  and  hav.e  never  even  heard 
of  one  another.  They  have  no  adequate  time  at 
present  in  which  to  think,  to  study,  or  to  discover 
what  people  are  doing  in  other  places.  All  their 
time  is  given  to  keeping  abreast  of  the  arduous 
day's  work.  To  release  earnest,  devoted  people 
such  as  these  from  some  of  the  details  of  their 
task,  to  double  their  usefulness  by  cutting  the  vol- 
ume of  their  present  work  in  half,  would  enable 
them  to  build  a  solid  foundation  of  skill  and  de- 
tailed knowledge  for  the  whole  profession,  would 
enrich  the  social  resources  of  the  world  at  a 
strategic  point. 

252 


CASE  WORK  AND  DEMOCRACY 

The  gains  already  made  in  case  work  are  sig- 
nificant and  inspiring.  They  have  been  made 
against  heavy  odds,  and  the  faith  and  courage  that 
have  gone  into  them  deserve  the  kind  of  recogni- 
tion here  suggested — a  kind  which  in  medicine 
has  already  brought  such  rich  returns.  It  is  fully 
recognized  that  endowment  of  special  ability  in 
the  fields  of  scientific  research  and  of  education 
has  been  a  way  of  advancing  public  welfare  from 
which  every  one  has  been  the  gainer.  Similar 
endowments  in  the  field  of  the  study  and  practi- 
cal adjustment  of,  social  relations  would  serve 
not  alone  certain  socially  disadvantaged  groups, 
but  all  humanity. 

We  are  told  that  the  law  is  no  respecter  of 
persons.  Be  that  as  it  may,  we  are  slowly 
realizing  that  administrators  of  the  law — not  in 
courts  alone  but  in  a  hundred  places  where  it 
is  a  question  of  carrying  out  the  intent  of  the 
law — must  learn  to  interpret  that  intent  through 
respect  for  personality.  Wherever  these  admin- 
istrators ignore  the  things  that  help  and  hinder  ^ 
personality,  wherever  they  fail  to  study  and  allow 
for  individual  differences,  treating  unequal  things 
253 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

equally  instead,  the  intent  of  the  law  and  its 
actual  achievement  become  so  little  related  that 
they  often  appear  to  glide  by  one  another  like 
ships  that  pass  in  the  night.  Social  advance 
could  not  be  better  served  than  by  such  a  series  of 
discoveries  and  training  processes  as  would  give 
this  country  a  new  generation  of  administrators — 
a  generation  skilled  in  adapting  the  public  intent 
to  the  individual  circumstances. 


254 


XII 

CONCLUSION 

TET  ME  now  attempt  to  sum  up  in  a  few  para- 
*■"*  graphs  the  ground  which  has  been  covered  in 
the  preceding  pages  of  introductory  description. 

Examples  of  social  case  work  show  that,  by 
direct  and  indirect  insights,  and  direct  and  indi- 
rect action  upon  the  minds  of  clients,  their  social 
relations  can  be  improved  and  their  personalities 
developed. 

Insights  imply  a  knowledge  of  innate  make-up 
and  of  the  effects  of  environment  upon  the  indi- 
vidual. The  failure  of  a  case  worker  to  learn  his 
client's  social  and  personal  background  usually 
means  failure  to  effect  any  permanent  adjust- 
ment, but  these  diagnostic  processes  interplay 
with  those  of  treatment,  and  no  sharp  line  can  be 
drawn  between  them. 

Action  ranges  from  the  humblest  services, 
guided  by  affection,  patience,  and  personal  sym- 
255 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

pathy,  to  such  radical  measures  as  complete 
change  of  environment,  the  organization  of  re- 
sources where  none  existed  before,  and  the  reknit- 
ting  of  ties  long  broken.  Officialism  is  to  be 
avoided.  The  most  successful  case  work  policies 
are  encouragement  and  stimulation,  the  fullest 
possible  participation  of  the  client  in  all  plans, 
and  the  skilful  use  of  repetition.  Sometimes 
there  must  be  warning  and  discipline;  always 
there  must  be  direct  action  of  mind  on  mind. 
One  of  the  most  characteristic  methods  of  case 
/work  is  its  many-sided  approach,  its  assembling, 
1  binding  together,  and  readjusting  processes.  The 
"social  case  worker  is  not,  however,  a  sort  of  be- 
nevolent middleman.  It  is  true  that  he  acts 
through  other  specialists,  other  agencies,  and 
through  his  client's  own  social  group,  but,  in 
bringing  people  together,  he  is  far  from  washing 
his  hands  of  the  consequences  of  the  contacts 
effected;  on  the  contrary,  he  is  deeply  concerned 
to  discover,  with  all  these  others,  a  joint  program 
^  which  shall  achieve  the  desired  social  result.  It  is 
the  combination  of  all  these  enumerated  services, 
or  of  most  of  them  and  not  of  any  one  or  two, 
256 


CONCLUSION 

which  constitutes  social  case  work  of  professional 
grade. 

No  case  worker  is  bound  to  accept  the  philoso- 
phy of  any  other,  but  a  philosophy  of  some  kind 
he  must  have.  The  foundation  stones  of  such  a 
philosophy  are  suggested  in  this  book ;  they  are 
given,  however,  with  the  fullest  realization  that 
other  and  even  more  fundamental  ones  may  soon 
be  revealed.  These  suggested  foundations,  to 
restate  them  informally,  are  as  follows : 

(i)  Human  beings  are  interdependent.  There 
is  a  spiritual  unity  about  this  conception  which 
means  a  great  deal  to  those  who  have  grasped  its 
full  meaning  and  are  trying  to  live  by  it.  Pro- 
fessor Maciver  tells  us  that  "society  is  best 
ordered  when  it  best  promotes  the  personality  of 
its  members."  The  converse  is  also  true.  We 
achieve  personality  through  right  relations  to 
society  and  in  no  other  way.  The  art  of  social 
case  work  is  the  art  of  discovering  and  assuring  to 
the  individual  the  best  possible  social  relations. 

(2)  Human  beings  are  different.  A  genuinely 
democratic  social  program  equalizes  opportunity 
by  intelligent  mass  action,  and  provides  at  the 
'?  257 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

same  time  for  an  administrative  policy  which 
does  different  things  for  and  with  different 
people. 

(3)  Human  beings  are  not  dependent  and 
domestic  animals.  This  fact  of  man's  difference 
from  other  animals  establishes  the  need  of  his 
participation  in  making  and  carrying  out  plans 
for  his  welfare.  Individuals  have  wills  and  pur- 
poses of  their  own  and  are  not  fitted  to  play  a 
passive  part  in  the  world ;  they  deteriorate  when 
they  do. 

Perhaps  this  is  why  men  and  women  who  are  to 
become  assets  to  society  must  have  had  a  careful 
preparation  for  that  network  of  interrelations 
which  we  call  life.  They  cannot  be  turned  out  at 
wholesale.  In  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the 
making  of  a  social  person  takes  time  and  detailed 
attention,  the  home  is  the  social  institution 
to  which  is  usually  entrusted  the  beginnings  of 
this  task,  and  it  is  in  the  home  that  the  first 
case  work  adjustments  were  attempted.  The 
workshop  is  another  place  in  which  the  case 
work  method  is  destined  to  effect  beneficent 
changes,  though  its  introduction  there  is  recent 
258 


CONCLUSION 

and  not  yet  fully  developed .  Wherever  case  work 
becomes  a  serviceable  adjunct  of  some  other  and 
older  profession,  as  in  the  social  institutions  of 
the  school,  the  hospital,  and  the  court,  it  is  even 
more  important  than  elsewhere  that  its  practi- 
tioners should  be  thoroughly  grounded  in  their 
own  specialty  before  attempting  to  supplement 
the  work  of  other  specialists. 

The  whole  of  social  work  is  greater  than  any 
of  its  parts.  All  parts  serve  personality,  but  in 
different  ways.  Case  work  serves  it  by  effecting 
better  adjustments  between  individuals  and  their 
social  environment ;  group  work  serves  it  by  deal- 
ing with  people  face  to  face  but  no  longer  one  by 
one;  social  reform  serves  it  by  effecting  mass 
betterment  through  propaganda  and  social  legis- 
lation; and  social  research  serves  personality  by 
making  original  discoveries  and  re-interpreting 
known  facts  for  the  use  of  these  other  forms 
of  social  work.  The  case  worker  should  know 
something  of  all  forms — the  more  knowledge  he 
has  of  all  the  better — and  should  c?arry  through 
his  special  task  in  such  a  way  as  to  advance  all  of 
the  types  of  social  work  just  enumerated. 
259 


WHAT  IS  SOCIAL  CASE  WORK? 

Finally,  the  highest  test  of  social  case  work  is 
growth  in  personality.  Does  the  personality  of 
its  clients  change,  and  change  in  the  right  direc- 
tion? Is  energy  and  initiative  released,  that  is, 
in  the  direction  of  higher  and  better  wants  and 
saner  social  relations?  Only  an  instinctive  rev- 
erence  for  personality,  and  a  warm  human  inter- 
est  in  people  as  people  can  win  for  the  social  case 
worker  an  affirmative  answer  to  this  question. 
But  an  affirmative  answer  means  growth  in  per- 
sonality for  the  case  worker  himself.  The  service 
is  reciprocal. 


260 


INDEX 


Abbott,  Edith,  196,  238 

Action,  direct,  of  mind  on  mind, 

102,107-110;  indirect,  through 

the    social    environment,    102, 

110-121 
Adjustment:    between  the  indi- 
*  vidual  and  his  social  environ- 
ment will  always  be  necessary, 

98;  out  of,  134 
Adler,  Felix,  150,  171-172,  184 
Administrators  of  the  law,  253- 

254 
Aimless  dosings  of  social  ills,  87 
Allegri,  Lucia:    story  of,  80-86; 

case  of,  cited,   107,   109,   114, 

117,  118,  119,  120, 121, 139 
Allowance,  regular  weekly,  73 
Almshouse  worker  quoted,  127 
Americanization,  118,  154 
American    Marriage    Laws,    183 

(footnote) 
Analysis  of  acts  and  policies  in 

six  case  illustrations,  101-121 
Applicant,  term  not  used  in  case 

work,  28  (footnote) 
Arbitrariness  avoided,  40 
Arnold,  Matthew,  195 
Associated  Charities.    See  Family 

Welfare  Societies 
Atonement  and  Personality.    R.  C. 

Moberly,  D.D.,  94  (footnote) 
Attendance  officers,  219 
Autocracy:    in  the  policy  of  the 

same  thing  for  everybody,  150; 

case     work     cannot     progress 

under  an,  248 


Background  of  husband  and  wife, 
differences  in,  56 


Back  history,  33~34.  70,  76,  80, 

83,  106,  137 
Baldwin,  James  Mark,  129-130, 

171 
Basset,  a  Village  Chronicle.    S.  G. 

Tallentyre,  6 
Begging,  60 

Belonging,  the  sense  of,  119,  189 
Bielowski,  Maria:    story  of,  31- 

43;  case  of,  cited,  96,  105-106, 

108,   109,    112,   114,    116,    118, 

119,  122-124,  217 

Biography  and  the  study  of  fam- 
ily life,  190-194 

Blind:   the  greatest  single  handi- 
cap of  the,  161-162 
Boarding  homes,  44 
Bojer,  Johan,  126 
Bosanquet,  Mrs.  Bernard,  163 
Breaking  up  the  home,  72 
Breckenridge,  Sophonisba  P.,  196 
Bridgman,  Laura,  7.  9.  15 

Laura  Bridgman,  Dr.  Howe's  Fa- 
mous Pupil.  Maud  Howe  and 
Florence  Howe  Hall,  7 

Broken  Homes.  Joanna  C.  Col- 
cord,  155 

Bronner,  Dr.  Augusta,  105  (foot- 
note) 

Brooks,  Phillips,  20 


Campbell,  Dr.  F.  J.,  161-162 

Cannon,  Ida  M.,  213 

Case:     a    term    applied    to    the 
situation,  not  the  person,  27 

Case  conferences,  136-137 


26l 


INDEX 


Case  records:  Dr.  Howe's,  8,  10, 
28;  Miss  Sullivan's  letters,  10; 
choice  of,  26-31;  uses  of,  28- 
30;  confidential  nature  of,  29 

Case  Work  and  Democracy,  244- 
254.    See  also  Social  Case  Work 

Causal  factors,  search  for,  79 

Change  of  environment,  13,  24, 
43,  53,  66,  116-118,  198 

Charity  organization  societies. 
See  Family  Welfare  Societies 

Child  labor:  76;  campaigns,  203, 
231-235;  committees,  235 

Child-placing  societies:  work  of, 
with  George  Foster,  43-49; 
early  case  work  in,  244-245 

Child  welfare  work:  fuller  records 
of,  30-31;  illustrations  of,  26- 
49;  and  daily  life,  177;  for  neg- 
lected and  difficult  children, 
219;  in  child  labor  campaigns, 
234 

Children:  building  upon  affection 
for,  58,  61,  66-67;  the  rights 
of,  181,  186,  188 

Choosing  illustrations,  process  of, 
26-31 

Church  attendance,  113 

Client,  use  of  the  term,  in  case 
work,  27 

Club  work,  223 

Colcord,  Joanna  C,  155.  241,  242 

Combination  of  many  itemized 
insights  and  acts  involved  in 
case  work  of  professional  grade, 
102,  124 

Community  resources:  15,16,18, 
19;  case  workers'  duty  in  the 
absence  of,  115;  utilization  of, 
by  case  workers,  225 

Community  work,  223 

Conclusion,  255-260 

Confidential  nature:  of  case  his- 
tories, 29;  of  relation  of  social 
worker  to  client,  29 

Conklin,  Edwin  Grant,  146 

Continuity  of  policy,  248 


Court:  decision  based  on  social 
evidence,  42;  probation  officer 
and,  123;  children's  rights  in 
the,  188;  probation  in  the,  216- 
217;  procedure  in  the,  215,  217; 
social  evidence  in  the,  of  the 
future,  218 

Criminal  Justice  in  Cleveland. 
Pound  and  Frankfurter,  215 

Criticism  of  case  work  processes 
on  basis  of  long-term,  intensive 
treatment,  90 


Definition,  a  tentative,  of  social 
case  work,  98;  basis  of,  87-90 

Democracy:  and  individual  dif- 
ference, 149-154;  in  the  fam- 
ily, 182,  228;  case  work  and, 
244-254,  248-249;  a  daily 
habit  of  life,  249 

Dewey,  John,  142  (footnote) 

Difficult  girl,  a,  31-43;  Teresa 
Allegri,  83 

Disasters  and  rehabilitation,  219 

Discipline,  12-13,  22,  64,  109 

Drinking  man,  51-59 

Drinking  woman,  59-68 

Dutcher,  Elizabeth,  no 

Elements  of  Social  Science,  The. 
R.  M.  Maciver,  95  (footnote) 

Eliot,  George,  214,  244 

Employers,  1 19-120 

Endowment  of  special  ability  in 
the  social  case  work  field,  251- 
254 
Enuresis,  35 

Environment:  22,  23;  social  and 
99; 
See 


physical,  distinguished, 
heredity  versus,  146-149. 
also  Change  of  and  Social 

Equality:    not  likeness,  150; 

essence  of,  151 
Ethical   Philosophy  of  Life, 

Felix  Adler,  150 

Eugenics,  148-149 


the 


An. 


262 


INDEX 


Evolution   and   Ethics.      Thomas 

Huxley,  128 
Expert  advice,  20,  24 


Face  of  the  World,  The.  Johan 
Bojer,  126 

Family,  the:  a  council  of,  84-86; 
personal  equation  in  discussions 
of,  177-178;  specialists  should 
know  facts  of  the  life  of,  180; 
children  the  test  of,  181;  that 
fails,  187-188;  as  a  test  of  in- 
dustrial organization,  201-202; 
in  current  outlines  of  sociology, 
226.    See  also  The  Home 

Family  deserters,  135.  154-155 
Family  Social  Work,  Institute  of, 

249-250 
Family  welfare  societies:  fuller 
records  of,  30-3 1 ;  case  work  of, 
illustrated,  51-86,  134-136, 
139-142,  185;  and  housing, 
227;  and  tuberculosis  cam- 
paigns, 227;  and  studies  of  de- 
sertion and  non-support,  227; 
and  social  research,  227-228; 
in  child  labor  campaigns,  232- 
234;  early  case  work  in,  244- 
245;  an  index  of  what  is  hap- 
pening in,  250 

Fathers  and  Children.  Ivan  Tur- 
genev,  187 

Feeble-minded,  the,  55,  XXI,  182 

Finding  work,  206-2.ro 

Follett,  M.  P.,  145 

Forms  of  Social  Work,  the,  222- 

243 
Foster,  George,  story  of,  43-49; 

case  of,  cited,  96,  no,  112,  116, 

179,  189 
Foster  homes,  selection  of,  44 
Frankness,  21,  40 
Free  homes,  selection  of,  44 

Freedom  of  growth  the  impor- 
tant thing  in  case  work,  251 

Fundamental  principles  restated, 
257-258 


Group   character   of   some  case 

treatment,  80,  in,  139-142 
Group  thinking,  84-86 
Group  work,  223,  224,  229 

Habit,  re-education  of,  73,  108 
Haldane,  J.  S.,  95  (footnote) 
Hall,  Florence  Howe,  7 
Hamilton,  Cicely,  178 
Handicapped,  work  with,  220 
Harrison,  Shelby  M.,  236 
Health,  see  Physical  Condition 
Healy,  Dr.  Wm.,  104  (footnote), 

121 
Heath,  Arthur  George,  16s 
Heredity  and  Environment.     Ed- 
win Grant  Conklin,  146 
Heredity     versus     environment, 

146-149 
Hocking,  Wm.  Ernest,  132 
Holbrook,  David  H.,  229 
Home,  the,  175-194;   developing 
affection    for,     58;      re-estab- 
lished,   63;     instinct    of,    65; 
breaking  up,  72;    as  a  family 
center,  78;    and  children,  118; 
not  the  institution  of,  for  its 
own  sake,  179;   many  kinds  of 
social  work  visits  to,  180;  pro- 
posed substitutes  for,  181;  and 
the  school,  197;  and  the  work- 
shop,   201-202;    rehabilitation 
of,  after  disasters,  219;    as  a 
preparation  for  life,  258.     See 
also  The  Family 
Hospital    social   work,    210-214, 

230 
Housing  conditions,  120-121 
Howe,  Maud,  7 
Howe,  Dr.  Samuel  Gridley,  7-9, 

10 
Human    Interdependence,    126- 

143.  257 
Human  Nature  and  Its  Remaking. 

Wm.  Ernest  Hocking,  132 
Human  Psychology.     Howard  C. 
Warren,  94  (footnote) 


263 


INDEX 


Humble  services  as  a  means  of 
treatment,  23,  58,  64,  107-108 

Husband  and  wife  disagree,  51- 

59, 184 
Huxley,  Thos.,  127-128 


Illustrations:  Miss  Sullivan  and 
Helen  Keller,  9-25;  process  of 
choosing,  26-31;  Maria  Biel- 
owski,  a  difficult  girl,  31-43; 
George  Foster,  a  dependent 
child  placed  out,  43-49;  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Rupert  Young,  hus- 
band and  wife  who  cannot 
agree,  51-59;  Clara  Vansca 
and  her  neglected  children,  59- 
68;  Winifred  Jones  and  her 
children,  widow  not  an  efficient 
home  maker,  68-80;  Lucia 
Allegri  and  her  relatives,  who 
fail  to  understand  her  situation, 
80-86;  pellagra  cases,  134-135; 
desertion  case,  135-136;  group 
case  work,  130-142;  unwise 
service,  167-171;  of  visiting 
teaching,  190-200;  of  case 
work  in  compensation  field, 
205-206;  relief  in  aid  of  wages, 
236;  reports  to  public  depart- 
ments, 238 

Imaginative  sympathy,  23,  37,  42, 
106,  107 

Immigrant  family,    80-86,    185- 

186 
Immigration:     117-118;     recent, 

154;  and  case  work,  220-221 

Individual  Differences,  144-158, 
257-258 

Industrial:  employment  of  wo- 
men and  equality,  152-153; 
conditions,  237 

Industrial  disease  legislation,  230 

Infallibility,  no  claim  of,  40 

Innate  make-up:  and  prognoses, 
105  (footnote);  not  easily  dis- 
tinguished, 145 

Insight  into  individuality  and 
social  environment,  1 01-102, 
103-107 


Instinctive  responses  versus  the 

reasoning    and    habit-forming 

processes,  164 
Institutional  care,  43,  60,  189 
Intensive  case  work,  90,  142,  176, 

251 
Interest,  any  serious,  has  power 

of  radiation,  136 
Interrelation     of     the     different 

forms  of  social  work,  222-243 
Introduction,  5-25 
Introduction    to    the    Science    of 

Sociology.     Park  and  Burgess, 

228 
Irresponsibility,  57 

James,  William,  191 

Jones,  Winifred:  story  of,  68-80; 
case  of,  cited,  104,  108,  112, 
113,  114,  117,  119,  121,  166, 
179,  189,  225 

Keeping  faith,  24,  108 
Keller,  Helen,  10-25 
Knowing  what  is  happening,  41 
Kropotkin,  Prince,  129 

Lane,  Franklin  K.,  203 
Legal  aid  societies,  220 
Letters   of  William   James,    The. 

Edited  by  his  son,  191 
Level  of  participation,  170 
Life  of  Pasteur,  The.     Rene  Val- 

lery-Radot,  192-194 
Lippmann,  Walter,  142  (footnote) 
Long-term  services  to  individuals, 

90,  142,  176,  251 

Maciver,   R.   M.,  95    (footnote), 

146 
Macy,  Mrs.,  see  Sullivan 
Marital  difficulties,  52-59 
Mark,  Thistleton,  95  (footnote) 
Marriage:  current  discussions  of, 
177;  the  rights  of  children  and, 
181;  laws  relating  to,  182;  ad- 
ministration of,  laws,  183,  227; 
education  for,  184-185 


264 


INDEX 


Marriage  and  Divorce.  Felix 
Adler,  184 

Mead,  George  M.,  130 

Mechanism,  Life  and  Personality. 
J.  S.  Haldane,  95  (footnote) 

Medical-social  work,  210-214; 
pressure  of  numbers  in,  212- 
213 

Mendelian  laws  and  human  in- 
heritance, 147 

Mental  examination,  72,  112 

Mental  experts,  106 

Mental  hygiene:  of  industrial 
workers,  204 

Mental  testing,  46;  value  of,  104 
(footnote);  and  social  evi- 
dence, 72,  104-105 

Meredith,  George,  183 

Meyer,  Dr.  Adolf,  183 

Moberly,  R.  C.,  D.D.,  94  (foot- 
note) 

Moral  and  Social  Significance  of 
the  Conception  of  Personality. 
Arthur  George  Heath,  165 

Motive,  1 70-1 7 1 

Mutual  Aid,  a  Factor  in  Evolution. 
Prince  Kropotkin,  129 

Myerson,  Dr.  Abraham,  147 

Neglected  children,  59-68 

Neighborhood:  opportunities  of 
a  new,  66;  work,  223;  condi- 
tions, 229 

New  generation  of  administra- 
tors, 254 

New  State,  The.  M.  P.  Follett, 
145 

Numbers,  pressure  of:  in  visiting 
teaching,  200;  in  hospital  so- 
cial work,  212-213;  in  family 
social  work,  208,  210,  227,  239- 
241;  in  probation  work,  217; 
in  public  service,  247;  in  all 
forms  of  social  case  work,  252 

Obedience,  lessons  in,  12-13,  22 
Occupational  resources,  1 19-120 


Officialism,  absence  of,  108 

Osier,  Sir  William,  243 

Our  Social  Heritage.  Graham 
Wallas,  148,  153 

Outlines  of  Historical  Jurispru- 
dence. Sir  Paul  Vinogradoff, 
202 

Panic  year,  figures  of  a,  51 

Parent:  and  child,  160,  185;  ob- 
ligations to,  187 

Park,  Robert  E.,  227 

Parole  officers,  220 

Participation  of  the  client  in 
making  and  carrying  out  plans 
for  his  welfare,  39,  48,  109-110, 
170-171,  173 

Pasteur,  Louis,  192-194,  243 

Patience,  108 

Pauperism,  167 

Pearson,  Sir  Arthur,  162 

Pedagogy  and  personality,  94 
(footnote) 

Pellagra,  135 

Perkins,  Frances,  204-206 

Perkins  Institution  for  the  Blind, 
7,  9,  19 

Permanent  welfare  as  a  test  of 
case  work,  90,  142 

Perry,  Bliss,  93  (footnote) 

Personal  equation,  the,  in  dis- 
cussions of  the  family,  177-178 

Personal  influence,  108 

Personal  side  of  case  work,  126- 
128,  244 

Personality:  of  Helen  Keller,  22; 
the  service  of,  24-25;  develop- 
ment of,  the  aim  of  case  work, 
90,  97,  260;  effect  of  loss  of 
social  status  or  health  upon, 
91;  nature  of,  92;  and  indi- 
vidual differences,  92;  must 
grow  or  atrophy,  93;  no  scale  for 
measuring,  121-122;  not  static, 
122,  13 1 J  society  the  source 
and  origin  of,  129-132,  257; 
reverence  for,  158,  248;  all 
forms  of  social  work  serve,  259 


265 


INDEX 


Philosophy  of  social  case  work, 
128, 257 

Physical  condition,  35,  46.  48, 
54.  57.  63,  74.  79,  "2,  141 

Physicians:  and  social  case  work, 
135,  144;  and  patients,  160; 
private  practice  of,  221 

Pity,  the  handicap  of  an  un- 
nerving, 161-162 

Placement  work,  37,  44-49 

Plato  on  equality,  151 

Pound,  Roscoe,  215 

Prevention,  230 

Preventive  medicine,  211 

Principles  of  Sociology.  E.  A.  Ross, 
185 

Privately  supported  agencies: 
staff  representation  in,  248- 
249;  continuity  of  policy  in, 
248 

Probation:  for  Maria  Bielowski, 
32-35,  42;  insights  needed 
in,  122-123;  pressure  of  num- 
bers in,  216-217;  need  of  good 
social  training  for,  work,  231 

Professional  organization  of  so- 
cial workers,  national  in  scope, 
243 

Prohibition,  241-242 

Psychiatric  Family  Studies.  Dr. 
Abraham  Myerson,  147 

Psychiatry  and  social  case  work, 
133,  144,  213,  221 

Psychology  from  the  Standpoint  of 
a  Behaviorist.  J.  B.  Watson,  94 
(footnote),  164-165 

Public  administration  and  case 
work,  238-239,  245-248,  253- 
254 

Public  Education  Association  of 
New  York,  198,  200,  228 

Public  employment  bureaus,  207 
Purposeful  Action:   the  Basis  of, 
1 59-1 74;" routine  and,  164 


Recreation,  37.  68,  73.  114,  223 
Reid,  Thomas,  91 


Relatives,  12;  participation  of ,  in 
case  work,  16;  of  Rupert 
Young,  53-59;  of  Clara  Van- 
sea,  62,  65,  113;  of  Winifred 
Jones,  69,  77;  of  Lucia  Allegri, 
84,  85;  of  a  button  maker's 
family,  140 

Relief,  material:  167-174;  as  a 
substitute  for  justice,  172;  in 
aid  of  wages,  236-237 

Religious  instruction,  20-21,  24, 
113,  144 

Repetition,  75,  109,  166 

Rigidity,  no  permanence  with 
extreme  of,  184 

Ross,  E.  A.,  184-185 

Royce,  Josiah,  130 


Sainte-Beuve,  Charles- Augustin, 
222 

School  records,  45.  48,  66,  74.  "2. 
169 

School  —  Workshop  —  Hospital 
— Court,  195-221 

Schools:  policy  of  same  thing  for 
everybody  in,  196;  case  work 
in,  196-201 

Self-respect,  appeal  to,  38 

Sense  of  the  whole  in  social  work, 
223,  245,  259 

Sham  families,  187-188 

Shopmates,  co-operation  of,  140 

Short-term  services  to  individu- 
als, 88,  176 

Social  agencies,  team  play  be- 
tween, 113-114,  141 

Social  Case  Work:  in  Being,  26- 
86;  defined,  87-125;  uncon- 
scious, 5-7,  11;  as  neighbor- 
liness,  7;  when  subsidiary  to 
some  other  professional  ser- 
vice, 27.  88-89.  214.  259; 
widening  scope  of,  30,  251; 
profession  of,  not  well  estab- 
lished, 87  (footnote);  of  the 
short-term  variety,  88,  176; 
of  the  long-term  and  intensive 
type,  89-90,  142,  176,  251;  a 
form  of  teaching,  94.  96;    the 


266 


INDEX 


special  approach  of,  96;  dis- 
tinguished from  mass  treat- 
ment, 98;  is,  a  specialized 
form  of  skill?  100;  material 
with  which,  deals  a  part  of 
daily  life,  102,  177;  Per- 
sonal side  of,  126-128,  244; 
must  have  a  philosophy,  128, 
257;  and  psychiatry,  133.  144- 
213,  221;  of  one,  two,  and 
three  dimensions,  138-142; 
and  social  psychology,  142- 
143;  field  of,  not  identical  with 
that  of  other  professions  deal- 
ing with  personality,  144;  and 
reverence  for  personality,  158; 
present-day,  175;  intensive, 
may  bear  a  separate  name 
later,  176;  short-term,  176; 
in  schools,  196-201;  in  work- 
shops, 204;  in  hospitals,  210- 
214;  in  courts,  216;  private 
practice  of,  221;  and  group 
work,  224;  and  social  reforms, 
225,  234;  and  social  research, 
227,  230;  in  child  labor  cam- 
paigns, 232-234;  and  industrial 
conditions,  237;  and  public 
officials,  238;  under  public  and 
private  auspices,  248 

Social  case  workers,  increasing 
demand  for,  250 

Social  diagnosis,  skill  in,  saves 
time,  103-104 

Social  environment:  99;  insight 
into  the  resources,  dangers,  and 
influence  of  the,  102,  103-107; 
approach  through  the,  char- 
acteristic of  case  work,  m; 
indirect  action  through  the, 
illus.,  139-142 

Social  and  Ethical  Interpreta- 
tions in  Mental  Development. 
James  Mark  Baldwin,  130 

Social  heritage,  147-149 

Social  psychology  and  social  case 
work,  142-143 

Social  reform,  223,  227,  228,  231 

Social  relationship:  no  one,  can 
serve  for  all,  in;  a  key  to 
client's  life,  132;  the  approach 
by  way  of,  133-134 


Social  research,  224,  227,  230,  251 

-253 
Social  settlements,  143.  223,  232 

Social  Work  in  Hospitals.    Ida  M. 

Cannon,  213  (footnote) 
Social  work  and  social  case  work, 

US 
Society  the  source  and  origin  of 

personality,  129-132 

Special    ability,    endowment   of, 

251-254 
Spiritual  gains,  20-21,  68 
Staff  representation  on  commit- 
tees of  private  agencies,  249 

Stages  of  development:  in  social 
case  work,  154;  in  medicine, 
2Ii;  in  the  administration  of 
justice,  215 

Standard  of  Life,  The.  Mrs.  Ber- 
nard Bosanquet,  163 

Stimulation:  and  encouragement, 
program  of,  72,  75.  80,  109; 
of  wants,  166 

Story  of  My  Life,  The.  Helen 
Keller,  11-22 

Stout,  G.  F„  162 

Stranded  travelers,  220 

Studies  in  Good  and  Evil.  Josiah 
Royce,  130 

Study  of  Poetry,  A.  Bliss  Perry, 
93  (footnote) 

Subsidiary  case  work,  supple- 
menting service  of  another 
profession,  27,  88-89,  214,  259 

Suggestion,  73 

Sullivan,  Anne  Mansfield  (Mrs. 
Macy),  9-25.  40,  95.  107,  117. 
224 

Summary  of  ground  covered,  255- 
260 

Sympathy,  two  kinds  of,  23; 
imaginative,  37.  42 

Syphilis,  35.  41 


Tallentyre,  S.  G.,  6 
Teacher  and  pupil,  160 


267 


INDEX 


Teaching  and  social  case  work, 

95,  133,  144 
Technique:       and      constructive 

imagination,    107;    versus  slo- 
gans, 242;   and  a  sense  of  the 

whole,  243 
Temperament,  91  (footnote) 
Thrift,  lessons  in,  64-65,  67,  114 
Trade   union  a   serious   interest, 

136 
Trained  social  workers,  need  of, 

157. 251 
Training  schools  of  social  work, 

243 
Truancy  and  Non-Attendance  in 

the   Chicago    Schools.      Abbott 

and  Breckenridge,  196 
Trust  estates,  administration  of, 

a  field  for  social  case  work,  219 
Tuberculosis,  140 
Turgenev,  Ivan,  187 

Unemployed,  the,   154,  208-210, 
239-242 

Unfavorable  conditions,  165-166 
Unfit,  the,  127-128,  182 
Unfolding  of  Personality,  the,  as 

the   Chief  Aim    of  Education. 

Thistleton  Mark,  95  (footnote) 
Unwise  service,  1 67-1 71 

Vaile,  Gertrude,  150-151 
Vallery-Radot,  Rene,  194 


Van  Dyke,  Dr.  Henry,  151 
Vansca,   Clara,  story  of,   59-68; 
case  of,  cited,   108,   109,   113, 
114,  116,  118,  119,  121,  179 
Victory     Over     Blindness.        Sir 

Arthur  Pearson,  162 
Vinogradoff,  Sir  Paul,  202 
Visiting    Teacher   in   the    United 
States,  The.     A  survey  by  the 
National  Association  of  Visit- 
ing Teachers  and    Home  and 
School  Visitors,  200 
Visiting  teachers,  197-201,  228 
Vocational  guidance,  206,  220 

Wallas,  Graham,  147-148,  153 
Wants:  stimulation  of,  166;  pro- 
gressive and  higher,  167 
Warren,  Howard  C,  94  (footnote) 
Watson,  J.  B.,  94  (footnote),  164 
Wider  self,  theory  of  the,  131 
Widow  with  children,  68-80 
Working  homes,  36,  44 
Workmen's     compensation     ad- 
ministration   and    case    work, 
204-206 
Workshop,  the:    and  the  home, 
201-202;  case  work  in,  204,  220 

Young,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Rupert, 
story  of,  51-59;  case  of,  cited, 
108,  no,  112,  113.  116,  118, 
120,  121,  210,  239-242 


268 


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